World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Mistweaver and Essence Font
With the changes to Mistweaver during the transition to Legion, there was already a degree of homogenization from what was previously a fairly unique gameplay experience to something more similar to what already existed in other healing classes. As you consider further changes to Mistweaver, is further samey-ness something that's "on the radar"?
It is, although possibly in the opposite way. If anything, thinking that Essence Font had to be forced into an off-cooldown design from the start "just to be different" probably didn't help anybody. The spec flowing better for everyone using it matters more than symmetries or antisymmetries between specs and how they look on paper. Nobody actually playing either spec is going to forget whether they're on a Mistweaver or a Resto Druid just because Essence Font follows a successful design like Wild Growth. The spells around them, the different interactions they have, and the whole pile of talents, traits, and item bonuses all doing different things ensures that.

There's always a balance between lessons and good designs that are generally true throughout the game, and variance between specs. And powerful AoE heals usually having some cooldown (for a number of reasons) is a factor that's more likely to improve Mistweaver gameplay than worrying about being a carbon copy of other specs (which it's pretty far from, all things considered). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Brewmaster - Stagger in Patch 7.2.5
What exactly do you mean by a cap on how much damage can be staggered? Is there a maximum amount of damage that is allowed to be in the stagger dot? Or does each attack have a maximum amount that can be absorbed from it and added to the stagger dot? This is hugely important to know.
There will be a maximum amount of total damage that you can have banked in your Stagger DoT. Any overflow beyond that will continue through to your health.

I personally love the way Blackout Strike fits into the rotation, especially with Blackout Combo.
And you're not alone; we recognize that there are many Brewmasters who love Blackout Combo, and have Haste in the right thresholds to make it flow reasonably well. One of the things of utmost importance to us with this rotation change is that it doesn't feel worse to those like you. We have several experienced Brewmasters internally who voiced this apprehension when first hearing about these changes, and after playtesting it they all agreed that it felt the same to them. In our books, that's a win, since it's an improvement for the rest of the Brewmasters who aren't in that sweet spot. We hope that sentiment is common externally as well, so please test it out when the PTR goes up, and let us know how it feels. Your feedback on this really matters.

The ability to be GCD capped, or very close to it, is something that I have always loved about brewmasters and on a personal level of feedback it is really important to me that that type of gameplay is still available and viable. Brewmaster has always been a very high APM spec (even if not all of the GCDs directly translate to defensive benefits) so please be careful to maintain that as you tinker with the rotation.
We absolutely hear you, and are targeting Spitfire, Rushing Jade Wind, and Haste at players like you. It'll probably take us some iteration on the energy and proc rate numbers to get the feel just right, so we'll need your help with PTR testing feedback.

Please Increase the IsB duration cap, at least 30-40s. 16s is too short.
And when will you address that bears have been OP for too long and EASIER to play without any significant nerf?
We're starting with a cap of "double the base duration," but that may feel too restrictive, and we'll iterate. This is still early in the process (PTR hasn't even started yet), and none of this is set in stone.

Cheers to everyone that has provided valuable feedback here so far. We'll keep reading and iterating.

"First, Blackout Strike and Breath of Fire will have a direct defensive value: they'll grant a stack of Elusive Brawler (per target hit, in Breath of Fire's case)." -- I am sure you are well aware this will push Mastery's value through the roof.
That's certainly possible, and we'll adjust stat tuning if needed. Again, this is intended to be performance-neutral, so we're not trying to buff OR nerf overall performance here.

On the AM max duration discussion, there's been a ton of great feedback on that so far. I'd like to go into why we're considering this change a little more. Forgive me for the verbosity (hah):

This effects Brewmasters more than other tanks, but not exclusively. The main reason that this affects Brewmasters more is that they are meant to split their resource between two brews: Ironskin and Purifying.

Consider a simple situation of two bosses, each beating on a tank. The Brewmaster is using a mixture of their Brews, maintaining ISB while using excess on PB (or maybe even letting ISB fall off when the boss stops to cast something, or is otherwise unthreatening for a moment). She gets more Brew charges than she needs to keep ISB up, but she's using those excess charges on PB, so ISB duration is remaining low.

The co-tank, let's say a Warrior for example, is built a little differently, having two separate defensive resources (Shield Block charges and Rage for Ignore Pain). Both are being generated and consumed at a similar rate, also not gaining increasing Shield Block duration.

Things are good here, and let's suppose for the sake of argument the two tanks are 'balanced' in this context.

---

OK, now let's change the design of the fight, to one where there's one huge boss, and the two tanks take turns tanking for 30sec at a time. Arguments of this being a less-engaging fight aside, let's look at how that affects the tank balance.

While the Warrior is OTing, he's building up Shield Block charges, but once he hits max charges, they're being wasted. He can use one at a time as they're generated, but they don't last longer than it takes to generate, so his Shield Block buff duration doesn't grow over time. Similar deal with Rage and Ignore Pain. He builds up Rage, and when that caps out, he builds up an Ignore Pain stack, but that caps out pretty quickly too. Excess Rage is wasted (at least defensively anyway; they can put it into damage). When the Warrior taunts, he goes into it with some buffer of his max Shield Block charges, maybe a single partial Shield Block buff, and max Rage and Ignore Pain. Overall, he could carry over some value from that time not tanking, but not all of it.

Meanwhile, when the Brewmaster is not tanking, they're building up charges of their single defensive resource, Brew charges. Once at max Brew charges, she starts using Ironskin Brews, as they're generated. Since there's nothing to Purify, she never does so, and all of her charges go into Ironskin Brew, creating a surplus of Ironskin duration that just grows over time. When she taunts, she goes into it with max Brew charges, and a 1min long Ironskin buff. She never has to Ironskin the whole time she's tanking, and can send all of her Brew charges into Purifying, over tripling (if not more) how often she can Purify, providing a sizable gain over her Warrior counterpart. All that time she spent not tanking goes into storing up defensive value for when she is tanking, with no limit.

If the two tanks were 'balanced' in the first fight, then the Brewmaster is overpowered in the second. Alternatively, if you argue that they're balanced in the second fight, that means they're underpowered in the first. The goal of this change is to place a reasonable limit on how much value you can carry over from time spent not tanking, so that we can tune the tanks to be balanced in both of these situations, not just one of them.

I totally get that right now you can always get benefit out of hitting Ironskin Brew, never being fully wasted, and so the prospect of going to a system where there may be a time where you're just sitting on full charges, wasting them sounds like a negative. Please understand that for most other tanks, that's just normal; a Warrior that's not tanking is just wasting the defensive value of their Shield Block charges once at max charges, and that's just an accepted norm. By bringing Brewmasters into parity in this regard, we can then tune them to be more consistently balanced with other tanks, which is the core goal of the change.

One of the most common responses so far has been "I understand wanting a cap, but 2x*duration is too short". Totally reasonable argument, and we'll need your help finding what the right cap is. We chose that to start with because that's consistent with things like Ignore Pain, Mark of Ursol, Blood Shield, Soul Fragments, etc. Given the more liberal use of Brew charges, it may be more appropriate to be higher for Brewmasters.

I'd love to keep hearing your thoughts on this, and I hope that this massively-over-verbose post helped better explain our thought process here. Thanks to those of you that stuck with it, reading it all the way through.

This is probably the most extreme example I can pull from in game currently and it results in 21.5 million staggered, which is certainly a lot but I know on Mythic Gul'dan, there have been moments where I've had between 10 million and 18 million staggered and subsequently purified. How will this design idea allow those two different situations to co-exist? How does the game react to me being sent to stagger cap because of a single huge ability that should've killed me rather than the fact that the boss encounter just hits extremely hard? And if your retort is "well, brewmasters shouldn't be able to solo fel scythes and still continue to tank the boss" my counter is "what about guardians doing the same thing with roughly the same amount of externals?"
That is exactly my retort, and Guardians shouldn't be able to either. Soloing every 100-Energy Fel Scythe is perfect example of the cheese this is intended to prevent, and we'll be preventing it on Guardians as well.

How much of a threshold are we talking? One stagger bar? Two? Five? Ten?

When we reach this threshold, what happens? Do we begin to take unmitigated hits? Will stagger simply stop working? If so, what's the plan for taking an unmitigated raid boss hit, as a few bosses are capable of 100-0% a 910 brewmaster in a single swing?

The current idea is that the Stagger bar that the UI shows is the cap, which matches up with your health bar, since that'll be the most understandable and intuitive. Then, however much of a buff to max health is needed to make that balanced.

Example, with 80% Stagger, 33% Armor for convenient numbers:

HP: 100/100 ~ Stagger: 0/100

Take a hit for 30, armor reduces that to 20, then stagger takes 16, and 4 goes through to HP.
HP: 96/100 ~ Stagger: 16/100

Time passes and 8 of the Stagger damage goes over into HP.
HP: 88/100 ~ Stagger: 8/100

Then you take a big hit for 60, armor reduces that to 40, then stagger takes 32, and 8 goes through to HP.
HP: 80/100 ~ Stagger: 40/100

You quickly Purify 50% of that.
HP: 80/100 ~ Stagger: 20/100

Then you take a *massive* hit for 210 (something cheesy), armor reduces that to 140. Stagger would take 112, but there's only room for 80 in your Stagger bar. So Stagger takes 80, and 60 goes through to HP.
HP: 20/100 ~ Stagger: 100/100

TL;DR: The Stagger bar on your UI is now representative of your maximum stagger pool, and any overflow damage continues on into your HP bar. Max HP is increased as needed, such that these two bars combined are a big enough pool for normal gameplay. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Outlaw discussion: RTB and True Bearing
Two things I think many of us can agree on right now:

• 1. True Bearing's cooldown reduction per combo point spent mechanic is fun to play with. The mechanic has been on the spec for a long time as a passive with a different name (Restless Blades), and largely drove the pacing and feel of the spec.
• 2. True Bearing is much stronger than any of the other single Roll the Bones buffs, on average.

That said, we're going to make two changes to Outlaw Rogues in 7.2.5:

• 1. The True Bearing mechanic is being added to Outlaw as a baseline passive (called Restless Blades), tuned to an appropriate pacing and power level for how many combo points the spec currently generates. Restless Blades, currently in 7.2.5 is tuned at 0.5 sec of cooldown reduction per combo point because realistically, the spec now generates easily 2-3x more combo points compared to a couple expansions ago, and the pacing impact and tuning of Restless Blades should reflect that.
• 2. True Bearing will remain as one of the 6 Roll the Bones buffs, but will be tuned down from 2.0 to 1.0 sec of cooldown reduction per combo point. We're serious about balancing each of the 6 individual buffs against each other, and True Bearing at 2.0 sec is clearly out of line.

We'll be keeping a close eye on Roll the Bones during 7.2.5 development, and as usual will make further tuning/adjustments as necessary. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvE
are there any gear catch up mechanics in 7.2 i've heard of tokens but heard they are hard to get?
Not very hard to get: Broken Shore Nethershards and tokens are an evolution of Apexis/Baleful from Tanaan; also WQ ilvl raised (WatcherDev)

PvP
How is it possible that I've played 1,500 games the past two seasons above 2.2k and still don't have Elite shoulders or helm.
Sorry about. This situation is the motivation behind changes in 7.2. I hope your experience improves next season. (holinka)

Since M+ gives a item at the end of the week why not do the same thing with arena? would increase participation?
The weekly quest associated with each rated bracket is the equivalent of the Mythic Keystone cache. (WarcraftDevs)

Professions
Can the blacksmith mount recipe drop from Tichondrius in LFR? Please answer, will save some people a lot of time to know.
The recipe doesn’t drop in LFR, but it is a guaranteed drop on Normal or higher. We will clarify the source of that recipe a future patch. (WarcraftDevs)

Lore
How capable is a Death Knight alone of taking on a village of regular militia soldiers? In a roleplay scenario ofc
The DK starting experience was intended to show that a single DK was a merciless nigh-unstoppable force of nature. YMMV! (DaveKosak)

A sleek, classic look...
With the new Classic Battle.net skin for the Blizzard Desktop App, you can once again experience your favorite memories of years past.


Unprecedented immersion
To meet the demands of today's epic entertainment experiences, we are bringing Classic Battle.net to the latest state-of-the-art virtual reality platforms. You'll be the envy of all your friends when they see you sporting your sweet VR helmet!

Stay awhile, and listen!
Reintroducing the Classic Battle.net MP3 player! Turn up the volume and jam out to your favorite Blizzard classics from our expansive library of original tracks!

A legacy within a legacy
Get ready to dust off your favorite retro devices! The Blizzard Mobile Authenticator is now backwards compatible with all mobile phones and pagers. Simply connect your device to your account, and you'll be ready to game out in style!

Perfect gem activated!
We're bringing back the classic Diablo II Battle.net chat gem! Finally discover its true purpose in our classic Battle.net desktop app skin for Diablo III.

[[Note to community team: when you write the intro paragraph for this, include some flavor text about Mecha-Arthas, and maybe do some foreshadowing about an upcoming conflict with Vol'jin Prime.]]

New Zone: The Underneath

• Very strange things are happening in Duskwood, and it's up to you to investigate the disappearance of a local boy.
• Team up with an all-star cast of heroes, including a mysterious girl, several of the boy's friends, and the boy's mother (as portrayed by the wonderfully talented Onona Windrider).
• The story plays out in eight chapters, which you can experience at your own pace, but we know you're just going to binge them all weekend anyway.

Story and World

• Corrected an issue causing Dadgar's name to incorrectly be presented as "Khadgar."
• The Armies of Legionfall have been successful in their mission to defeat the Burning Legion. Azeroth is finally safe, from all enemies, forever. Now's a good time to brush up on your general chat skills.
• To better express the core story of the Legion expansion, all World Quests will now include harpies shouting at you about whatever it is you're doing.
• Increased the damage dealt by lava and similar environmental hazards to be juuuuust enough to kill you before you can jump out.

Raids

• Players must now have the achievement "Ahead of the Curve: Kil'jaeden" in order to zone into the Tomb of Sargeras raid.
  
  • Developers' notes: We've heard extensive feedback from players about the inconvenience of manually screening group applicants based on their achievements. We hope that by automating and enforcing these requirements on our end, we can streamline the process, so that players can more quickly organize raid groups and begin working towards their ultimate goal of defeating Kil'jaeden.
• Additionally, players will not be able to enter any raid instance without having first completed the Maw of Souls dungeon at least 500 times on Mythic Keystone difficulty.
• Mythic difficulty raids have been retuned around a new group size of 21.2 players. We feel that the extra 1.2 players will allow an extra layer of depth that we could not have achieved with round integer values.
• We're pleased to announce that the award for Best Opera Performance goes to... Westfall Story!
• Portals to Dalaran have been added to each room in the Tomb of Sargeras raid. This should make changing talents much more convenient for those of you who are still too cheap to buy Tomes of the Tranquil Mind.
• [[Hey, encounter designers: have we adjusted Onyxia's Deep Breath ability lately? Can someone check?]]
• We've introduced the rest of Withered J'im's family to the World Boss rotation, including Withered J'ane, Withered J'ethro, and Withered J'steve.
• I'm sorry, no... there's a mistake. Wikket, you guys won Best Opera Performance.
• Added a series of achievements unique to Raid Finder difficulty:
  
  • Developers' notes: Not all players are motivated by powerful set bonuses and striking armor sets. Some want the lasting prestige of achievements, and while we offer countless achievements that are specific to other difficulties, there have never been achievements that are only available through Raid Finder. That ends here.
  • Raid Finder: Darkbough - Defeat Il'gynoth without ever accidentally damaging his Eye with a Nightmare Ichor's explosion.
  • Raid Finder: Tormented Guardians – Defeat Cenarius without engaging any of the hostile creatures in the corrupted Moonglade.
  • Raid Finder: Rift of Aln – During the Xavius encounter, loot at least two Legendary items from the Overflowing Loot Chests hidden in the mists of the Rift.
  • Raid Finder: Arcing Aqueducts – Defeat at least 1000 Crystalline Scorpids before defeating Skorpyron.
  • Raid Finder: Royal Athenaeum – Stun 24 other players with one explosion from Arcanic Release.
  • Raid Finder: Nightspire – Defeat Tichondrius after having dealt more total damage to Tainted Bloods than to Tichondrius himself.
  • Raid Finder: Betrayer's Rise – Successfully avoid being caught in any of those scary-looking pink bubbles that pop up.
• After careful consideration, Odyn has admitted that beating his champions nearly to death immediately before sending them to battle in Helheim was perhaps not the wisest course of action. As such, the Odyn encounter in Trial of Valor has been replaced with a written exam.

Dungeons

• We're thrilled at the positive response we've seen regarding the Mythic+ system in Legion. We're expanding on that general concept with the following game modes:
  
  • Mythic -
  • Mythic ×
  • Mythic ÷
  • (Mythic - x) = (22 + y) ÷ 7. Solve for Mythic.
• Added several new Mythic Keystone affixes:
  
  • Flocking: Your party will be periodically attacked by Seagulls, which will immediately stun the tank and kill the healer.
  • Organic: Has no noticeable effect on the dungeon itself, but it's probably a lot healthier.
  • Squeamish: Every time an enemy dies, all players will be totally grossed out and have to look away for a minute to catch their breath.
  • Forgetful: We don't actually remember what this one does, sorry.
• Corrected an issue that would cause the Grand Challenger's Bounty cache to occasionally give you an item for a slot where you weren't already wearing a Legendary.
• It's the Eye of Azshara. It's the thrill of the fight.
• The Ready Check feature has been updated to be more consistent with the overall theme of Legion.
  
  • When prompted, players will now be asked if they are prepared.
  • They may then choose to respond with either "I am prepared" or "I am not prepared."

Holidays

• To help further express the overall vision for Micro-Holidays as fun, low-impact events, we've added some new categories, including Mini-Holidays, Nano-Holidays, Smallidays, and Un-Holidays.
• Winter Veil has been cancelled this year. You know what you did.
• A new Micro-Holiday has been added: Create Your Own Holiday Day.
  
  • This new Micro-Holiday allows you the freedom to celebrate anything you can imagine!
  • As soon as you log in, you'll notice a clean slate available to you – no holiday NPCs, no decorations, nothing to stand in the way of you and your imagination.
  • Gather your friends, and celebrate! Or don't! Use this non-Holiday Holiday to do whatever you like.

Artifact Weapons

• New interface option: Use scientific notation for displaying Artifact Power costs for Artifact Traits.
  
  • Developer's note: You're going to need this.
• Artifact Knowledge can now be researched to 9000. We're not sure what will happen to Artifact Power levels if that gets any higher.
• Someone pointed out that the words "Artifact" and "Relic" mean basically the same thing, so we've simplified these two systems. You can now put Artifacts in your Artifacts.
• New mechanic: Artifact Talents
  
  • In addition to your Talents, Honor Talents and Artifact Traits, you can now choose among several Artifact Talents.
  • [[What do these actually do?]]
• We've been seeing a lot of feedback from some players who are concerned that they won't be able to earn every Artifact Appearance available to them, particularly on their alternate characters. To correct this issue, you can now earn infinite Artifact Appearances.

Legendary Items

• Your base chance to receive a Legendary has been increased by 30%, but your luck now increases at a 50% slower rate. We're pretty sure this is better but we're honestly just guessing at this point.
• We've made several other improvements to the Bad Luck Protection system. As such, it has been renamed "Mediocre Luck Protection."
• We've added a chance for Legendaries to drop when performing the following activities:
  
  • Fishing
  • Taking flight paths
  • Dancing on a mailbox while AFK
  • Asking Dadgar about the future
  • Nomi
• As part of our continued efforts to balance Legendary items, they can no longer be repaired. This way, we're pretty sure it'll just work itself out eventually.
• Many commonly-used addons have been reclassified as Legendary. You may only use two of these addons at any time.
• We've thoroughly interrogated Sephuz, but he just won't break. We remain confident that we can one day learn his Secret.
• Cord of Infinity has been redesigned again. It now grants Mage Armor a new, unique icon.
• Anger of the Half-Giants is very sorry and didn't mean what it said about you. Anger of the Half-Giants is just going through some tough times right now and is having trouble controlling its temper.
• In addition to its current effects, Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus will now invite you over for dinner more regularly and send you polite text messages every few hours asking how you're doing. Please, it just wants you to like it.
• [[Note to designers: How have we not made a Legendary S.E.L.F.I.E. Cam yet? Or did we do that already? We may have done that already.]]

Professions

• Some players reported that Nomi's research was occasionally granting recipes. We were unable to reproduce this behavior internally, but believe we've fixed the issue causing it to happen. Please continue to report this clearly unintended behavior if it should continue.
• As part of our ongoing efforts to reduce unnecessary complexity, Herbalists have been given an ability that just creates gold.
• The recipe for Frost Oil no longer requires Dadgar's Whiskers.
• The recipe for Azsuna Frittata has been removed from the game.
  
  • Developer's Note: While we still believe in the core philosophy behind Azsuna Frittata, it wasn't exactly problem-free, and as the initial craze has now passed, we feel removing it is the right choice.
• Posting auctions of tradeskill materials in stack sizes of 1 now has a chance to delete a Legendary item. If you have no Legendary items, it will delete your character instead.
• No changes have been made to Prairie Dogs.

PvP

• With the release of Patch 7.8.0, Legion Season 1 titles will be redistributed once again for the last time we totally swear.
• By popular request, PvP vendors have been added. Head to your nearest capital city if you would like to purchase some PvP.
• Several new PvP Brawls have been added:
  
  • Arathi Bluster: It's your favorite point-capture map, but with the Violent Winds effect from Eye of Azshara active. Don't get blown away!
  • Eye of the Volcano: We've taken the gameplay you know and love from Eye of the Storm and placed it in the center of an active volcano. Hope your lava jumping skills are up to scratch!
  • Warsong Belch: Available only during Brewfest, you'll rise to the challenge of capturing the flag while all players are forcibly inebriated!
  • Strand of the Really Ancients: Travel back in time to an era before engineered weapons and break through those huge doors with just your bare fists. Hey, you wanted longer battlegrounds!
• Implemented a new feature that automatically adjusts PvP stat templates for a given spec whenever a popular streamer complains about it on Twitter.

Classes
[[Community team: remember to go through this list and randomly remove a few changes before you post this.]]

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• We've heard some concerns from the Death Knight community about the location of their Order Hall, and a general desire for a change of scenery. As such, Acherus has been relocated to Silithus.
• Several Death Knight talents have been retuned:
  
  • Will of the Necropolis now has a 35% chance to activate. It been renamed to Might of the Necropolis.
  • Abomination's Might now has a 50% reduced chance to activate. It has been renamed to Abomination's Maybe.
  • All Will Serve now only has a 30% chance to summon an additional minion, and has an additional 20% chance to summon no minions at all. It has been renamed to Some Could Possibly Serve, If They Feel Like It.
• Wraith Walk's tooltip has been updated:
  
  • It now reads, "Causes the Death Knight to immediately become inextricably lodged within the nearest crack or crevice between them and their target."
  • Functionality unchanged.
• Death Grip can now be recast within 10 seconds to put that thing back where it came from, or so help me...
• Rime has been removed, for reasons.
• Glacial Advance has been updated to advance even faster than scientists previously predicted.
• Breath of Sindragosa now makes you suffer as your pathetic magic betrays you.

Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• We've automated the character naming process to get players interested in trying the Demon Hunter in-game quicker. You'll automatically be given a traditional Demon Hunter name, such as "Skillidan" "Chillidan" or "Ìllïdåñ"
• We've expanded the Demon Hunter ability set to include several other iconic Demon Hunter abilities, including:
  
  • Drain Soul
  • Chaos Bolt
  • Soulstone
  • Ritual of Summoning
  • Unending Breath
• We're happy to announce an expanded version of Fel Rush! We hope you enjoy Fel Rush The Rock: Arcatraz Edition.
• New Talent: The Floor Is Lava:
  
  • You may now jump continually in the air. In fact, you have to. Touching the ground will result in immediate, painful death.
• Last Resort will no longer incorrectly cut the Demon Hunter's life into pieces.
• The inventor of Demon Hunters' Sigils has declared, long after the fact, that they're actually supposed to be called "siggils". Please stop saying "sijil" with the soft "g". Seriously -- this drives some people crazy and they're going to correct you for the rest of your life.
• All character customization features, such as Transmogrification and the Barber Shop, have been disabled for Demon Hunters. It's not like you can actually see what you look like through those ridiculous blindfolds, anyway.
• The Honor Talent "Awaken the Demon Within" has been removed. The Demon Within is already pretty woke.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Guardian Druids are now immune to damage.
• Balance Druids have had their primary resource redesigned once again, with a different take on the Balance Bar system used in Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor:
  
  • This new and improved version of the Balance Bar is instead called the Balance Beam.
  • The Balance Beam uses motion controls, along with a specially-designed peripheral, to determine the Druid's efficiency based on their gymnastic performance.
  • As you spin and twirl around the Balance Beam, a team of judges will grade your performance. The higher your score, the more damage you deal.
  • Balance Druids looking for an additional challenge may choose the "Uneven Bars" talent.
• Worgen Balance Druids can no longer cast Full Moon, because of what happened last time.
• As Infected Wounds no longer reduce the enemy's healing taken, we've also removed the effect that caused them to crawl within the enemy's skin.
• All Druids can once again cast Cyclone, but only on other Druids.
• Moment of Clarity now causes Feral Druids to be mentally taken out of the fight. It's like everything just totally made sense, man.
• Savage Roar is now 15% more savage.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• To avoid confusion with Demon Hunters, the Hunter class has been renamed to "Shooty Stabby Outdoorsy Types."
• Hati had puppies! You can attempt to control them like other pets, but there's a good chance they'll just chew on your furniture instead.
• New glyph added for A Murder of Crows: A Whole Lot of Pepes
• Ducks may now be tamed as pets.
• New Ability: Aspect of the Chupacabra:
  
  • Causes you to transform into some kind of dog-lizard and attack nearby livestock.
  • Cannot be used while the Hunter has a goat pet active, to prevent mishaps.
  • Gives you... a bonus to... cacti? Or something?
  • [[To be honest, I'm not even sure what a chupa-thingy is, I just like the name. It's got a ring to it.]]
• Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, and Sidewinders now generate so much Focus that Marksmanship Hunters can't even see their whole world crumbling around them.
• Vulnerable replaced by new effect: Triggered
  
  • Your target is offended that you'd even point that thing at them.
  • How dare you?

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Aluneth can now be added to your ignore list.
• The Artifact Traits "The Storm Rages" and "Let It Go" have been removed from the game, along with the Frozen Orb ability, because seriously that movie came out like 4 years ago and we're tired of hearing about it EVERY SINGLE DAY.
• Cone of Cold never bothered me, anyway.
• Conflagration has been removed from Fire Mages and given to Destruction Warlocks instead. We're not entirely sure how it got there in the first place.
• Arcane Missiles and Arcane Explosion have been given a visual update! They're now slightly more purple.
• Mages now have +10% bonus to Class Fantasy.
• Mages who open a portal to Northrend Dalaran after finishing a Legion dungeon run will be immediately and permanently banned from the Internet. Yes, the whole thing.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Brewmasters who attempt to use Ironskin Brew, Purifying Brew, and Fortifying Brew too regularly will now be cut off and asked to call a taxi.
• Crackling Jade Lightning damage reduced by 30%.
  
  • [[Note to class designers: this is a preventative measure to prevent Windwalkers from being too strong once they figure out our secret DPS rotation]]
• Keg Smash has been removed. Seriously, that's just wasteful.
• Storm, Earth, and Fire renamed Earth, Wind, and Fire. This spell now chases the clouds away throughout the month of September.
• As part of an effort to present a more fun and lighthearted image to younger audiences, Mistweavers have replaced Essence Font with Comic Sans.
  
  • After using Thunder Focus Tea, Comic Sans will be replaced with Papyrus instead.
• Teachings of the Monastery has received some new curriculum, and will now be focusing on Common Core.
• Resuscitate no longer requires mouth-to-mouth contact on Undead players.
• Dark Side of the Moon has been reworked so that it now lines up better with that old movie you're watching.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Choosing the Unbreakable Spirit talent will now cause the Paladin to never stop chasing their dreams, Titus.
• After casting Tyr's Deliverance, any offline or out of range party members will be left a note indicating that they may collect their healing from the Paladin Order Hall between 8 and 10 PM.
• We made some changes to the Cavalier talent, but we won't bother explaining them to you. They're probably too complicated for you to understand.
• Lay on Hands will now properly respect the target's personal space.
• We've accidentally scrambled the names of various abilities using the words "Divine," "Protection," "Hammer," "Holy," or "Blessing."
  
  • We're not entirely sure what Hammer of Protection or Blessing of Divine Holy are, but they're probably pretty good.
• The errant letter 'e' has been removed from the names of the talents Bacon of Faith, Bacon of the Lightbringer, and Bacon of Virtue.
• Luminescence renamed to something that's an actual word.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Discipline Priests have returned from an extensive off-site training session at Nar'thalas Academy. They are now 100% more Disciplined.
• Divine Hymn now summons a panel of celebrity judges who might, if you cast it really well, ask you to be on their team. This is what you've been dreaming of your whole life!
• Shadow Word: Death has been given a name more befitting its effect. It's now called Shadow Word: One More Step On The Unwavering Road To Oblivion.
• Holy Priests who choose the Apotheosis talent and then never activate it even once through the entire boss fight will now be disconnected from the game for a week. I mean, really. Ugh.
• That tentacle that Priests can summon now also spawns the other nine, making for a total of ten tickles, as intended.
• We've outsourced the rest of this section to the Shadow specialization.
  
  • Hope is an illusion.
  • Embrace the void.
  • Your heart WILL EXPLODE.
  • NYARL'FGWTH!
  • AIGN RYOGL THO'GOTHAYL U'THRGAL!
  • rez pls

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Rogues will now shoot arrows more slowly.
• New Ability: Spectral Sight Cloak
  
  • When activated, makes the Rogue invisible to Spectral Sight.
  • [[Reminder for the class team: Don't forget to give Demon Hunters a "Spectral Sight Cloak Sight" ability 2 days before releasing the patch. Otherwise we won't be able to add "Spectral Sight Cloak Sight Cloak" in 7.8.5.]]
• Dirty Tricks is now a TV show that looks behind the scenes at what magicians really do for a living, starring Mike Rowe.
• Outlaw Rogues may now also shoot the deputy.
• Corrected 73 more "rouge" misspellings in chat. Someday, we'll get them all.
• The Assassination ability Vendetta now causes the Rogue to go on a decade-long quest of revenge.
• Several Outlaw Rogues have been arrested. Turns out renaming the spec was a pretty big tip for local law enforcement.
• Shroud of Concealment now posts a zone-wide yell when a member of your party moves outside the clearly-marked boundary, is spotted by an enemy, and then tries to tell you that they weren't even close. Stop lying, Todd.

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• [[shower thought: do we really need this section? Let's talk Monday. I vote we cut it entirely.]]
• Shaman who pronounce the name of their class incorrectly will no longer be allowed entry to their Order Hall.
  
  • Also, people who say "Shamans" are just the worst.
• Overcharge now has a 100% chance of occurring when you take your car in to the shop.
• Sentry Totem has been returned to the game.
• Just kidding. We're actually removing some other totems.
• Spirit Walk has been re-routed around that construction zone that seems like it's never going to be finished.
• Ancestral Vision is now 10% less creepy when you're doing things in the bathroom.
• Hailstorm now seems to happen a lot more frequently than you recall in this part of the world.
• Shaman in Ghost Wolf form will now be regularly assured by nearby NPCs that they're good dogs, Brent.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Felguards have stopped playing their records backwards.
• Rain of Fire will now correctly create a downpour of both rain and fire. In some cases, this will result in a beautiful rainbow. Other times, the rain will extinguish the fire and nothing will happen. That's just, like, the cycle of life and stuff.
• Unstable Affliction has had its functionality extended to more accurately suit its unstable nature. You can no longer predict exactly what Unstable Affliction is going to do. Sometimes it heals the target. Sometimes it takes 9 seconds to cast. Sometimes you'll just explode. Good luck!
• All talents named "Grimoire" have been renamed "Book", with the exception of the Shepherd Grimoire. We couldn't find a good place for it in the Warcraft movie, so we just killed it off in the first 20 minutes.
• Cataclysm now deals damage equal to 1200% of spell power (was 1000%), and is remembered 20% more fondly than it was about four years ago.
• Shadowfury has been replaced by Nightfury, which must be trained extensively, and is kind of toothless.
• Power Trip now causes Warlocks to automatically kick guildmates who disagree with their thoughts on loot distribution.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Weapons and shields equipped by Warriors will now lose durability every time they hit a target, and will break entirely once their durability reaches 0.
  
  • Developer's Note: This change will better emphasize the core Warrior fantasy as the appointed knights of Azeroth. Note that you'll probably want to bring several weapons to each boss encounter. Of course, if you run out, you could always just grab a random skeleton's arm or something.
• The talent "Double Time" has had its name simplified to "Charges." Warriors who take Charges still gain another charge of Charge, andCharges' charges of Charge will charge faster.
• Whirlwind now has an additionaOpportunity Strikes when you least expect it!
• MORTAL COMBO! Dana-nana-nana-nana-nah-nah.
• Bladestorm is now 15% scarier when you didn't think to bring an umbrella when you left this morning.
• Morale Killer now sometimes fails to reduce the cooldown of Demoralizing Shout. Why do you have to be so negative all the time, anyway?
• Carnage now covers the Warrior with venom, causing them to deal increased damage to those weird spider-men in Suramar.
• Bloodbath now covers the Warrior with blood, causing a strong sense of déjà vu.
• Warpaint now covers the Warrior with paint, causing them to continue beating this dead horse.
• Blizzard is now hiring! We're looking for someone with fresh, new ideas.

Brawlers Guild

• The Stranglethorn Streak Brawl is unavailable.

Broken Shore

• The message sent when a Sentinax boss appears should now play a loud warning sound.
  
• The Sentinax should now send a message when it has finished recharging and is ready to respond to beacons again.
  
• Rare elite enemies now drop significantly more Nethershards.
  
• Creatures summoned below the Sentinax now drop significantly more Nethershards.
  
• A number of unintended sources of Nethershards no longer drop Nethershards.

Classes

• Additionally, we've got a working fix for AOE class abilities! It's live now in NA, and will be live in other regions within the hour. (Source)
  
• Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Fiery Brand should now be applied to the correct target when cast using an @Focus macro.
    
  
  
• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Glyph of Twilight Bloom and Autumnal Bloom should again modify your Lifebloom spell.
    
  • Stellar Empowerment no longer buffs the initial damage of Moonfire and Sunfire.
    
  • Wax and Wane now increases the damage of your next Moonfire by 25% per stack (was 15%).
    
  
  
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Echo of Ohn’ara’s proc chance increased to 20% (was 10%).
    
  • Talon Bonds can proc Mastery: Hunting Companion.
    
  
  
• Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Blessed Stalwart now increases Shield of the Righteous's effects by 8% (was 25%).
    
  
  
• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Fixed a bug that caused Cosmic Ripple to incorrectly cost mana.
    

Dungeons and Raids

• Corrected an issue that was preventing the Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge achievements for Gul'dan from being properly awarded.
  
• Artifact Power rewards will now correctly scale for Mythic Keystone levels 11 through 14.

Player Versus Player

• Dampening now starts at a 20% healing reduction in 2v2 matches.
  
• Combatant's gear now starts at item level 840 and goes up to item level 860 (before Warforging), based on your character's average item level.
  
• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Overrun's range has returned to a minimum of 8 yards and maximum of 25 yards.
    
  
  
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Trueshot aura will continue to countdown correctly when the Hunter is under the effect of Cyclone.
    
  
  
• Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Flash of Light now heals for 35% more in PvP situations.
    
  • Holy Light now heals for 50% more in PvP situations.
    
  • Light's Grace now increases the healing of Holy Light by 50% (was 100%).
    
  
  
• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Holy Ward will now cause the target to be immune to Scatter Shot.
    
  
  
• Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Ethereal Form can now be cast in Arenas and Battlegrounds.
    
  • Restoration PvP Template Mastery has been increased by 10%.
    

Quests

• Eyir has returned from a critically important meeting with Odyn and is once again available in her vault for the worthy.

Over the first couple of days since players took the fight to the Burning Legion on the Broken Shore, we’ve been keeping a close eye on Nethershard acquisition, and making adjustments as necessary via hotfixes.

We’re rolling out hotfixes that make the following changes:

• Enemies around the Broken Shore will no longer drop Nethershards by default.
• Enemies in the shadow of the Sentinax will drop Nethershards.
• Nethershard rewards from Rare Elites on the Broken Shore have been increased.
• Nethershard rewards associated with Sentinax portals and beacons have been greatly increased in a hotfix that just went live.

Legion Assaults, coming on Tuesday, will also be a lucrative source of Nethershards.

What we want to avoid is a Timeless Isle frogs situation, where mindlessly grinding a field of mobs is the most efficient thing to do. To be clear—we’re not trying to take away from what players are doing, and we definitely don’t want to make your adventures take longer. Overall, our goal here is to make the Broken Shore more rewarding, improve Nethershard acquisition, and ensure that the objectives on your map generally indicate where you’ll find the best results.

Thanks for playing, and we’re really glad to see you out there defending Azeroth!

Developer Q&A and Class Questions
Our general feeling has been that classes are not a good topic for one of the 1hr livestream Q&As, because most people ask questions (understandably) that pertain to one spec, or at most a handful. And with 36 specs in the game, a large fraction of people would inevitably come away from a Q&A saying "why weren't there any questions picked about my spec" (and probably conclude that it's because we don't care about their spec). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Talent Customization
This is indeed something we talk about a lot, especially as the number of talent rows that are custom to an individual spec's rotation is now up to 4 or 5 on nearly all specs. You might not need 5 ways to customize which aspect of your rotation you'd most like to emphasize, or want to change 5 things to better optimize from one raid boss to the next. The broad question of "how do I want to make talent choices, what do I want them to be based on, and in what situations is it fun to change them?" is good for some open-ending thinking. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Artifact Traits in PvP
There are two important points we want to make sure everyone knows:

1. All artifact traits are active in PvP, including Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds.

2. Players always receive 36 points worth of Stamina in their Artifact, including the 10% Stamina received from the first trait on the new Artifact Emblem.

'All traits' means everything, including any and all points placed in Concordance of Legionfall. Nothing is disabled. (Official Forums)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.2.5 Unholy Death Knight Changes
We are increasing the cost and damage of Death Coil in 7.2.5. Even with no other changes, that change is likely a pure buff (even though it looks neutral), since the resource it's draining is one that was being wasted anyway.

It's not yet clear whether we'll open up further changes in 7.2.5, since the core rotation is generally working well. Having 3 main buttons (Festering Wound, Scourge Strike, Death Coil) that all have no cooldowns, but instead juggle 3 resources (Runes, Runic Power, Festering Wounds), is a relatively unusual melee rotation that we think has turned out pretty interesting. The biggest thing it needs is space to breathe on the resources, as has been discussed a lot. We'll see how it looks with the Death Coil change in addition to the earlier Runic Corruption change, as well as the loss of T19 set bonuses, and see if there's still a problem.

If we need to make further changes, the goal would likely be to focus on talents that cause a very large swing in resource generation or GCD usage. Because the rotation needs to not be flooded for max-level players with endgame bonuses, but also not too slow for leveling players, as was pointed out. This is an issue we're starting to pay more attention to across all specs (especially melee specs). As we have more rotation-affecting talents in the game than ever before, and we buffed a lot of of them in 7.1.5, many talents (or legendaries or similar bonuses) are trying to effect large DPS increases solely through giving more of a resource or proc. It's becoming a more common problem that specs which initially had good pacing get flooded in certain setups, and we want to start correcting those where we can. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[7.2] Balance Druid: Feedback
Wax and Wane: Best we can tell so far, there is no bug, simply a combination of two large multiplicative bonuses (Wax and Wane and Stellar Empowerment). Our goal was to make Wax and Wane, which we understand is weak, as strong as we could without causing any degenerate rotations such as single-target Moonfire spam. That was also the reason for adding Sunfire even though the tooltip will be slightly off until 7.2.5. But even at current tuning of Wax and Wane (post-buff) the incentive for a degenerate Moonfire-spam rotation is too high, as people are observing.

In an upcoming hotfix, we're going to further increase Wax and Wane's bonus, but also make Stellar Empowerment not buff the initial damage of Moonfire, Sunfire, and Stellar Flare. We're doing this not only because it's the most convenient way of solving the new Wax and Wane problem, but also because we actually think it makes the most sense long-term for what Stellar Empowerment should be. The intent of Stellar Empowerment is to buff your ticking DoTs while you AoE with Starfall, not to encourage spamming instant DoT casts during Starfall.

Edited for accuracy

I was glossing over the details--it would be possible in a sufficiently important case (the one you mention was adding a new talent, Cavalier). Wax and Wane not mentioning that it buffs Sunfire is not a huge problem. Anyway, that was an aside--main point was that adding Sunfire to the benefit was meant to double the value of the trait to get it closer to where it should be, and we were fine doing it immediately. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.2 Windwalker Feedback
Can we talk about how the benefit of master of combinations isn't even consistent with that of similar traits among other classes? It has 2 ppm and lasts for 6 seconds per proc, which is fairly weak
I believe the 2 RPPM visible in datamining is leftover data on Master of Combinations, and the actual proc mechanism will cause it to trigger much more often than that. The intention is for it to have similar average value to the similar traits on other specs. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 7.2.5 and Mistweaver Monks
On the initial 7.2.5 PTR, we are trying out a version of Essence Font that is even stronger, but has a cooldown. In addition to some combination of a healing increase and mana cost reduction, the duration of the HoT will be increased.

Essence Font having no cooldown has held back the spell and the spec in a few ways. It essentially says that three relatively heavy heals (Essence Font, Enveloping Mist, Vivify) have to compete with each other at all times. The texture of using a heavy spell on a short cooldown, then falling back to the decision between spammable spells (selecting based on cost, number of targets, etc.) is common among healers for good reason. And Essence Font's HoT mechanic that improves mastery is meant to specifically enhance that sort of gameplay, and will be more effective on a spell with a cooldown.

As already mentioned, the first change that comes along with it is buffing Essence Font itself. It no longer has to be held back by "if it gets too much stronger than e.g. Vivify, people will only use Essence Font", and can simply be a high-priority spell. We will made other adjustments as needed for gameplay or tuning. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mistweaver Feedback
However, one point that I would like addressed is what are we supposed to do when Essence Font is on cooldown, Uplifting Trance isn't available, Whispers of Shaohao has been used, and the the group still needs to be healed?
The initial version going out has a small buff to baseline Vivify. Also, the changes greatly increase the practical value of mastery, which is a hidden buff to the Vivify, Enveloping Mist, and Effuse casts you'll be making in between Essence Fonts.

Part of it, though, is you should have more of cadence between the high-priority heals that somewhat solve problems on their own, and the spells that don't always do that. You asked what to do when the "best" 3 or 4 things are on cooldown or not available, and that's similar to a Druid falling back to laying down Rejuvenations when she can't use Wild Growth or Swiftmend, or a Paladin using Flash of Light between Light of Dawn and Holy Shock cooldowns. Making use of the no-cooldown spells that are more limited is meant to be a moment when you look forward to the next heavy hitter coming back (even if it's just a few seconds for an Essence Font).

The concerns in feedback seem to mostly reflect tuning--that the "filler" kit of Vivify, Enveloping Mist, Effuse, and Soothing Mist isn't strong enough. Possibly that's true and the problem has been papered over on live by the ability to focus everything on Essence Font. Overall tuning will be something to watch on PTR, as with any spec getting any degree of shakeup. Tuning debates usually aren't too productive in early feedback, but maybe a helpful thing to say is: "if we hadn't been making any changes to Mistweaver, it would probably have gotten a small flat throughput buff before the next raid." (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Brewmasters in Patch 7.2.5
Hail! First round of Brews is on me, Monks. Shall we talk a bit about Brewmasters?

As Seph talked about in a recent Rogue thread, 7.2.5 will include much more significant class change than 7.2 did, and one of the specs that we're focusing on is Brewmaster. Brewmasters are currently quite strong, performance-wise, but have a few notable issues that we'd like to work out.

Offensive Abilities
Rotationally, Brewmasters are using a mixture of offensive and defensive buttons. Some parts of this worked well, such as Keg Smash and Tiger Palm granting partial charges of your Brews. One part that hasn't worked out well is in Blackout Strike and Breath of Fire. Having no direct defensive value, or interaction with other abilities in your rotation, they end up feeling disconnected, and leave you wondering why you're hitting them. There are a couple minor artifact traits that give them some defensive value, but that's ultimately negligible as far as rotation design goes. One saving grace here is the Blackout Combo talent, which gives a strong reason to care about Blackout Strike, and add a lot of depth (and complexity) to your rotation.

Another problem is that Blackout Strike has a 3.0s/Haste cooldown, which is actually rather bizarre on a class with a 1.0s GCDs. Experienced players have learned that you should get a significant enough amount of Haste to bring that down to something in the 2.2-2.5sec range, and alternate Blackout Strikes with other abilities, with awkward 0.2-0.5sec gaps in between your abilities. This also means that with the forced gaps, you become GCD-capped, and Energy stops functioning. Finally, one last problem we're looking at is that there are rather limited options for customizing the rotation through talents (pretty much just Blackout Combo), and no baseline variability, leading to some people finding it repetitive and predictable.

We'd like to clean this up, and here are our current thoughts on how (not set in stone, very interested in discussion and PTR testing).

• First, Blackout Strike and Breath of Fire will have a direct defensive value: they'll grant a stack of Elusive Brawler (per target hit, in Breath of Fire's case).
• Second, Blackout Strike will more smoothly fit into the rotation. We're going to try it having a cooldown, but Tiger Palm significantly reducing that cooldown, such that you can Blackout Strike every few GCDs, and not have any forced partial-second pauses. We want to make sure that Energy (and thus Haste) controls the speed of your rotation, so that that's in your control. If you want a more full, button-spammy rotation, you can favor Haste. If you prefer being more tactical with your GCDs, optimizing the timing of each one, you can favor other stats.
• And finally, to let you customize the rotation with both higher GCD utilization and some variance, we're planning to add a talent that gives Tiger Palm a high chance to reset the cooldown of Breath of Fire. (Where exactly to put that talent is unclear; replacing Chi Burst is the current idea, but we're not super thrilled with that.)

Defensive Abilities
Overall, Stagger is working quite well in the general case. Ironskin vs Purify (and in particular when to Purify) is a good choice, though maybe a tad bit skewed toward Ironskin right now. However, it becomes problematic in the extreme case, where Stagger is used to cheese mechanics that aren't intended to be survivable. For example, a Brewmaster may use High Tolerance and Fortifying Brew in order to get 100% Stagger, soak several of some raid mechanic that is intended to be entirely unsurvivable (probably even piercing immunities), Purify twice quickly, and get healed through what little of the damage is remaining.

The key source of this is when Stagger reaches 100% or near-100%, and our planned changes to solve this focus on that:

• We'll be reducing the Stagger gain of Fortifying Brew, and slightly reduce the Stagger gain of Ironskin Brew.
• We'll be raising Brewmaster's base armor to compensate.
• We're going to add a cap on how much damage can be Staggered (high enough that you won't hit it in normal gameplay, but enough to stop cheesing mechanics).
• There is also an artifact trait that increases the Stagger gain of Fortifying Brew that has been mostly-useless since 7.1.5, which we're going to redesign.

Again, the point of this is not at all to be a nerf in intended circumstances, but rather to shift around where the mitigation comes from, such that it can't be used to unintentionally bypass mechanics.

Relatedly, one mechanic that causes imbalance with tanks is that in a tank-swap situation in a raid, tanks can store up a large amount of active mitigation while not actively tanking, both in terms of ability charges, and buff durations. In general, this is fine, but it can be taken to extremes, and Brewmasters are a good example of that, frequently being able to go into their tanking with a 30+sec duration Ironskin Brew rolling. Some amount of this is fine, but to keep it within a reasonable range, we're going to put a cap on how long you can extend tank active mitigation buffs, to a maximum of twice their base duration.

Thanks for reading! We look forward to your feedback.

What are you doing to address the fact that ISB has basically become the new shuffle and requires 100% uptime? That's literally brew gameplay right now -> 100% ISB uptime and anything left goes into purify.
I touched on that a bit, that the decision is skewed a tad bit towards Ironskin right now. There are 3 changes here that will help with that:

• The increase to base armor will help you feel like Ironskin falling off is a death sentence.
• The reduction to Ironskin effectiveness will slightly decrease the difference between Ironskin being up and not.
• Our current plan for the mentioned artifact trait replacement is Purify percentage, which will increase the value of Purifying.

How does a talent like Tiger Palm resetting Breath Fire work when you have the legendary chest? Clearly we wouldn't take it since Keg is resetting breath about every 5 seconds. With both it would be absurd.
Occasional legendaries that push you away from or toward a particular talent are generally OK. If you have the Breath of Fire chest, you likely will want to pick one of the other talents instead of Spitfire (the Tiger Palm resets Breath of Fire one), and that's OK.

Will there be exceptions added to this rule? For example, will this not just completely negate the use of the 'Bastion of Light' talent for Protection Paladins? Gaining the instant charges allows them to go much further beyond the "twice their base duration", essentially throwing away all that additional SotR uptime that comes from the talent during the activation window.
There may be, yes. We don't want to invalidate any existing gameplay, just prevent the "I've been offtanking for a bit and have a crazy long duration buff up when I take over, skewing my priorities."

Without hard numbers, it is difficult to see if this will be a blessing or a curse.
Numbers matter for performance, and I want to reemphasize the fact that the changes I'm talking about are intended to be net-neutral, performance-wise. Of course they will affect performance, but we'll offset them with number tweaks, in whichever direction is necessary.

The point of all of these is gameplay, mechanics, and particularly rotational flow.

My first concern on hearing that there is a stagger cap is what does that mean for damage intake: once you're at stagger cap, do you take full damage from hits? How do you anticipate this working on mobs like The Demon Within, which is already hitting for approximately 5 million white damage per auto set? Extrapolating further to future mythic tiers, it's not necessarily unreasonable to anticipate mobs that will be hitting a monk in excess of 7+ million white damage (for example) every 1-1.5s. Given brew generation in your most favorable circumstances, it seems there is a real possibility of brewmasters essentially hitting some upper limit of mob they're able to tank before they're essentially as squishy as a dps, save dodging, due to having capped stagger.
To be clear, the stagger cap is not on the amount you can stagger per-hit, but on the total amount you can have delayed in your "stagger bar" at once. As stated, it's mainly a limit to avoid abusive cases, similar to how spells like Guardian Spirit have a point where they stop working. If you're about to try to soak something that will do a few times your maximum health in damage (even after cooldowns), you should expect to die immediately. This should come into play only in relatively extreme cases. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Holy Priest - Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Healing has been a bit of a puzzle to decide the right approach for in recent expansions. We always appreciate feedback on where it currently is, but for a few thoughts on it:

We definitively wanted to get rid of the version based on raid subgroups in Legion. At this point, it was the only spell left in the game that relied on that, and required raid leaders to rearrange groups at the behest of one player to make one of their spells work correctly. Furthermore, with an increasing amount of raiding being done in the "flexible" framework, raid sizes are not even reliably a multiple of 5 anymore.

We also want to be careful with heals that are too smart. A PoH with a large radius, smart targeting, and no cooldown would essentially be a self-working raid healing spell/rotation. As long as 5 people are damaged (which is frequently), you can spam that spell to the get best efficiency from your mana, not overheal, and not have to worry about targeting. That's a direction we don't like for healing gameplay in general and have been paring back on in recent years.

One other thing that felt bad about the 7.0 version (20 yard radius) was that it didn't hit the whole party in 5-player content. That's a role that Prayer of Healing has always had and that it should keep having.

Oh and since we're here to complain, Cosmic Ripple costing 5% base mana is the cherry on top of the cake atm. Way to destroy one's gameplay
This is a bug.

Talking about bugs; are you guys aware of discipline priest mastery currently being bugged?
Actual transfer % from Mastery to Atonement is being "locked in" upon log-in, spec swap and zone change.
Yes, a fix for this is incoming as well. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Rogue Class Fantasy and Upcoming Changes
I dont think the first point of one rtb buff will ever be possible. There will always be a buff sought after more than the others, and if you were to somehow put a CD on rtb for the duration of the buff to lockout rerolls it will simply feel punishing to play the class.

The second idea I think has a lot more merit, taking out one of the buffs will greatly improve getting a good combo. I enjoy outlaw as a playstyle for the most part, the only time I ever feel punished for playing the spec is when I'm trying to fish for TB and continue to get any one buff besides that. So I am all for your second idea here. Personally I think Grand Melee wont be missed.

To be clear, the (tentative) proposal is to reduce the number of dice, not the number of possible buffs (the dice remain d6's).

Players finding certain cases where rerolling has some use is not the end of the world. But the goal is similar to what we expressed way back in beta--rerolling, and especially very frequent rerolling, aren't a major part of standard gameplay. That's still the goal, and it wasn't borne out on live so far, and the feedback has been very consistent with the notion that we should still try to get there.

Some variance in Roll the Bones buff values is inevitable, not necessarily a problem. It doesn't even lead to rerolling, if the difference isn't large enough to be worth giving up high-damage Run Throughs. But as Seph said, in our estimation the bigger issue isn't the variance between buffs, but the variance in the number of buffs and the fact that a single buff is so far below the average outcome.

Hoooooooooooold up. Really? Because this is the first time a dev has said that they want SND to equal RTB. To this point, we've been told that SND was "an option," but intentionally not as strong as RTB. That's a huge about-face. But one I approve of.
There's probably some miscommunication here. S&D is a level 100 talent and should of course have positive DPS value. Therefore it should be stronger, on its own, than RTB. That was always the intention, although it may not have turned out consistently true so far. S&D will, however, likely be less strong than RTB plus Marked for Death (for example). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Broken Shore

• Hidden Wyrmtongue Cache can now be used by 5 players within 15 seconds of the first player looting them.
  
• Hidden Wyrmtongue Cache should now appear on the minimap.
  
• Rare elite corpses should now linger for 30 seconds longer after being looted to help prevent them from disappearing from the map.
  
• Increased the Nethershard rewards from the Sentinax Lieutenants.
  
• Beacons that reward gathering materials can now be used while the Sentinax is on cooldown.
  
• The message sent when a Sentinax boss appears should now play a loud warning sound.
  
• The Sentinax should now send a message when it has finished recharging and is ready to respond to beacons again.
  
• The Eye of Gurgh has received additional training in the art of fighting adventurers.
  
• On PvP realms, Deliverance Point should now have a rest area.
  
• Rare Elite commanders on Broken Shore are rumored to now drop more loot.

Classes

• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Glyph of Twilight Bloom and Autumnal Bloom should again modify your Lifebloom spell.
    
  
  
• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • The cooldown for Displacement is now correctly reduced by Everywhere At Once.
    

Class Hall

• Matilda Skoptidottir inside the Warrior Order Hall should once more be visible to players who just finished research.

Dungeons and Raids

• The dungeon quest "Return to Karazhan: The Tower of Power" is now completable in Mythic Keystone difficulty, in addition to all other difficulties.

Player Versus Player

• Focused Assault and Brutal Assault are now being applied to flag carriers.
  
• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Frenzied Regeneration now heals 25% of incoming player damage in the last 5 seconds, (was 50%) for all specs except Guardian.
    
  
  
• Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Ancient Mistweaver Arts no longer allows Soothing Mist to continue to heal while the player is stunned, silenced, disoriented, or otherwise interrupted.
    

Professions

• Archaeology
  
  • Surveying in elite digsites with Luron now gives credit towards "Surveying Student".
    

Legion came with a tremendous amount of class changes, and Rogues were a big part of this. We've been making adjustments/improvements to many specs since Legion has launched, and that will continue, especially for Rogues in the near future. Let's talk Rogue fantasy and mechanics a bit.

Assassination
Assassination has always had the Poison theme, but we think Bleeds pair well with Poisons here, both fantasy-wise and mechanically. The idea that you can apply a slew of Poison and Bleed damage over times to the target, dooming your enemy to certain death is one of our core fantasies for Assassination. At this point Assassination is clearly less of a "get in, kill, and get out" spec - that distinction is now more on Subtlety.

Agree that the balance of Bleeds vs. Poisons might be a little heavy on the Bleeds side currently on the baseline spec. That wasn't really super intentional. Assassination got Mutilate, Envenom, Rupture, and Garrote (probably the most obvious choices for a baseline rotation) after we divided up many of the Rogue skills between specs in 7.0. So the spec essentially already started a little Bleed-heavy. Add on top of that Blood of the Assassinated (which is fairly strong and everyone has) and Exsanguinate (which was overtuned at launch), both of which prop up bleeds more.

We like that the Assassination talent tree has two thematic paths - Poison (Master Poisoner + Agonizing Poison) and Bleed (Hemorrhage + Exsanguinate). But we lean on our talent trees to do so much more than just let you choose between 2 thematic paths for your spec fantasy - they have to offer simple passives vs. added complexity via new buttons, single target vs. AOE mechanics, playstyle/pacing customization, and more. And of course, all of this is extremely sensitive to the tuning and design of talents, set bonuses, legendaries, and artifact traits. Any one of these variables could be newly introduced or overtuned/undertuned and easily push Assassination down either the Poison or Bleeds talent path, essentially against your will if you like one theme over the other but want to maximize damage. For example, at Legion launch, Hemo + Exsan was the standard build, and now it's switched over to Master Poisoner + Agonizing. Tier 19 pushes Poison damage a bit via Envenom, but Tier 20 might push Bleed damage a bit via Garrote (note: T20 designs are still in flux, many are likely to change). We want to make both paths viable, but should be realistic and recognize that many variables can and will affect this, and that the balance will fluctuate over time.

On a couple talents:

• Agonizing Poison: We don't really like Agonizing Poison for many reasons. It replaces Deadly Poison (which feels core to Assassination Rogue) with an extremely passive, mostly invisible, and currently very strong Poison debuff that makes target-swapping and AOE more difficult. It's got a lot of things going wrong with it and is on the chopping block for the next patch. Ideas for replacements include a short-cooldown AOE Poison damage button that costs high energy or something that deals Poison damage in a rotationally-interesting way.
• Exsanguinate: This is a good talent. It has a clear theme with interesting mechanical and rotational implications. We'll look at tuning based on what happens with Agonizing Poison, but plans are to buff its damage and add a small energy cost, not because of tuning but because on-GCD buttons that don't cost Energy sometimes lead to Energy-capping, which doesn't feel good.

Overall we think the single-target Assassination rotation is in a good place. There are nuances to applying and maintaining your bleeds with maximizing Envenom uptime being an underlying core part of the rotation, as it has been for a long time.

Outlaw
The pirate theme is clear, and clearly contentious. I think it would be accurate to say there are many players who like the fantasy of the spec and many who don't. As a class with 3 specs of the same role, this is probably an okay place to be in.

We have a couple major mechanical goals for Outlaw in the next patch:

• Rebalance Roll the Bones: This is a two-parter.
  
  The first part is tuning each of the single-buffs against each other, narrowing the gap in power level between any two single-buffs. You should see this when the next patch hits PTR.
  
  The second part is more complex - we're considering removing the incentive to reroll almost entirely and re-acclimating everyone to getting 1 buff from RTB most of the time and not rerolling. The main problem involves ensuring the average expected value of casting Roll the Bones is close enough to 1.0 buffs that it's not better to reroll. With either the current 6-dice or an alternate 5-dice natural system, the probabilities are such that it's too lucrative to reroll when you get a single-buff right now.
  
  The current proposal is to reduce the number of dice being rolled from 6 to 5 and to hand-set probabilities to something like 79% chance for 1-buff, 20% chance for 2-buffs, and 1% chance for 5-buffs (yahtzee), bringing the expected value of a roll down to 1.24 buffs (plus additional value for synergies between buffs). The downside to this is that if you take a deep look at the probability distribution, in order for this to work, you realize that the dice would have to be loaded against the player. This isn't something we'd prefer to do (adjust randomness against the player's favor), but it might be something we have to do with the current Roll the Bones dice system in order to remove the incentive to reroll.
  
  Overall we want to reduce how much the spec is defined by Roll the Bones. RTB can be most of the time a single buff that might change your pacing or rotation slightly with relatively rare bonuses of 2-buffs or 5-buffs, but that the spec should completely work both mechanically and damage-wise without RTB, if you want to take Slice and Dice as a replacement.
  
  
• Smooth out Energy Generation: Outlaw suffers a bit rotationally from unpredictable Energy generation and Energy-flooding during Adrenaline Rush. The changes we're doing here are pretty simple and direct but should help to alleviate this issue - Adrenaline Rush reduced Energy regen increase but increased duration and Combat Potency procs twice as often for half the Energy each proc.

Subtlety
Subtlety in the long-term it has some room for improvements. For the next patch the first things we're looking at are:

• Shadow Dance: Shadow Dances happen a lot more than they used to and in PvE, that's been mostly a welcome change. The rotation is more dynamic than it used to be in previous expansions, with you going in and out of Shadow Dance more often. However, set bonuses, artifact traits, and legendaries frequently grant resources (to any spec) as their bonus (because it's mechanically interesting), and in the case of Subtlety, increased Energy/Combo Points has pushed Shadow Dance uptime to be higher than we think is good for the spec.
  
  Additionally, from both PvE and PvP Subtlety Rogues, we've heard that the spec's feeling of burstiness has been severely reduced, partially as a result of Shadow Dances happening more frequently. We'd like to address this in the next patch with a couple changes. First, Deepening Shadows will be reduced from 3 to 1-1.5 sec of cooldown reduction per Combo Ppoint baseline. Shadow Dance baseline charges reduced from 3 to 2. New talents on the same row that compete against each other will either 1) increase Deepening Shadows back up to the current 3 sec or 2) grant you increased damage during Shadow Dance. This lets you customize your Shadow Dance to happen more often, or be most bursty when it does happen. As usual, we'll retune the damage of the spec alongside these changes, but the first focus should be on changes to pacing and mechanics.
  
  
• Nightblade: On single-target, Nightblade works okay mechanically as a damage button that you press occasionally, but it doesn't really play as we'd like in AOE situations. The AOE rotation of Shuriken Storm->Nightblade everything isn't what we feel Subtlety should be about, on top of being basically identical to the Assassination AOE rotation. A direction we'd like to go is - Subtlety deals increased damage in AOE by dealing massively increased damage to a single target. In this vein, we're considering a new baseline passive that does something like "Each enemy hit by Shuriken Storm increases the damage of your next Eviscerate by ~25%, up to a max of ~5 stacks", which would push Nightblade completely out of the AOE rotation on 4+ targets.
  
  Separately but related, we don't think Nightblade is a perfect fit for the Subtlety fantasy. On top of being a core rotational damage over time ability on a "get in and get out/bursty" Rogue spec, it's also the passive snare on the spec, which we think could be delivered more simply by re-adding Crippling Poison back to the spec at some point in the future. Tying Subtlety Rogue's snare to a shadow-themed DoT was clearly an attempt at further separating Subtlety vs. Assassination as Shadow vs. Poison, but in hindsight might have been overkill, and it probably wouldn't hurt Subtlety's fantasy that much to have utility poisons back, if we don't find a better fantasy+mechanical alternative for the spec. Don't have concrete long-term plans on this specific subtopic, but it's on our minds.
  
  As an aside on the topic of adding back spells - after doing a lot of class fantasy-focusing and spell pruning in Legion 7.0 (which had many successes as well as failures), we've been adding back some spells to specs (though we do have some strict requirements here) which in hindsight didn't need to be removed. Good examples for Rogue are Blind (which we removed from Assassination) and Shroud of Concealment (which we removed from all Rogue specs), both of which we have since added back. The removal of Blind from Assassination made the spec a little too one-dimensional on the crowd-control front and the removal of Shroud of Concealment cost the class a interesting button that provided rare moments of coolness, without any rotational complexity or huge downsides aside from being an additional button.
  
  
• Shadowstrike: In the PvE rotation, Shadowstrike coming with a 15 yd teleport is mostly unnecessary, and also sometimes causes usability issues as an uncontrolled teleport on your core rotation. You might be in melee range, and suddenly the boss moves and rotates a bit, and suddenly you Shadowstrike teleport into a spot you don't want to be in.
  
  What we want to do here is add Ambush back to the spec as the replacement in the core rotation for Shadowstrike, and move Shadowstrike to a 30 second cooldown and back up to 25 yd range. Shadowstrike would become the second gap closer for Subtlety, different from Shadowstep in that it's essentially Shadowstep + Ambush in one button. On the table are alternatives like removing Shadowstrike entirely and giving Shadowstep reduced cooldown or 2 charges, but we currently feel Shadowstrike is cool enough of a button and high enough on the usability meter that it deserves a spot on the spec. We'd probably keep the damage, cost, and stealth requirement of Ambush and Shadowstrike identical in all cases to make Shadowstrike's only benefit over Ambush being the teleport.

When it comes to class/spec fantasy - players (including us) have many differing ideas. Even in this thread there are completely different thoughts and interpretations on what Rogue fantasy should be for each of the 3 specs. It's really hard to completely satisfy everyone. Our ongoing goal is to deliver distinct spec fantasies and playstyles that appeal to enough players and are fun enough to deserve a spot as one of the class's specs.

7.2.5 will have more class changes than 7.2 (which was the plan from the beginning), and this forum will likely have more to talk about, for both devs and players, once that PTR is underway. For the specs that do get significant changes, making sure our intent and goals are clear during the PTR is important to us, since it gets us the best feedback. As you've seen from the Rogue post, some specs have had tentative plans being formed even before 7.2 shipped, so they'd be ready for player testing with the maximum amount of time on 7.2.5 PTR.

Overall Item Level
The overall item level does indeed no longer take into consideration any extra Legendaries you have. This is intended (and was something we saw a lot of requests for on the forums) to give a more accurate assessment of a player’s maximum item level, since they cannot equip more than two legendaries anyway. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Honor Changes in Patch 7.2
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the amount of Honor required to level from Honor level 1-50 during Prestige 0 was cut in half in 7.2. Previous to 7.2, the amount of Honor required to level through Honor levels 1-10 was a very small number, so that characters would earn at least 1 Honor Talent in each tier very quickly.

Now that you no longer lose access to Honor Talents when you Prestige, the amount of Honor required for each level AFTER reaching Prestige 1 has been smoothed out. The total amount of Honor required for each Prestige level after Prestige 0 has been slightly reduced, not increased.

We also added the Enlistment Bonus in 7.2, which grants 50% additional Honor to the faction that needs more players in queue for battlegrounds. This is also granted to players who take advantage of our mercenary system and queue as the faction that needs more players. As a reminder, the battleground recruiters that enable mercenary mode are located in the Dalaran Sewers, at The Underbelly Descent. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)