World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Bug Fixes
Creatures and NPCs

• Fixed an issue that could cause Mahka, a quest NPC in Southern Barrens to become unresponsive.

Raids and Dungeons

• Upper Blackrock Spire: Fixed a situation on Challenge Mode and Mythic Difficulty that could cause Ragewing the Untamed's Engulfing Fire ability to be unavoidable.

Achievements

• Lovely Luck Is On Your Side: Fixed an issue that could cause players to not correctly receive credit for completing this achievement.

We will be opening the Eye of Azshara dungeon on Normal difficulty shortly.

Please use this thread to post any feedback on the dungeon. When posting, please note your group composition and any relevant information about the nature of your group (e.g. random LFG group, Mythic raider guildmates, etc.). At this stage, a lot of overall combat balance is in flux, but we're still very interested in hearing overall feedback and impressions of the experience and mechanics.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Beastmastery Hunter
Entirely too much focus on Random Beasts, not enough on our actual pets
Since Beast Mastery has been unlocked, this has been the strongest point of feedback, and we've heard you, loud and clear.

Coming soon will be a glyph that makes Dire Beast summon your stabled pets, instead of random area-themed beasts. We're also considering a talent that replaces Dire Beast with a new shot, and are interested in feedback and ideas on that concept.

Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Aura of Sacrifice / Divine Shield Interaction
Aura of Sacrifice is not intended to deal damage through Divine Shield; this should be fixed in an upcoming build. This will also fix the issue where it kills you if you stand near a "healer" target dummy that does very high DPS to itself. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Shadow Priest
In the vast majority of cases, you'll likely want to enter Voidform as soon as you're able to. However, there are still many cases where it's extremely valuable to be able to delay it until the right time. This includes things like saving burst for a key moment in a fight, or when out questing if you're about to kill the last mob that's in range. Because of this, we're trying out a more flexible, manually-activated Voidform. Feedback on how that feels, whether it's more hassle than it's worth, etc, is quite welcome. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Resto Shaman
Two simultaneous Healing Stream Totems not working is a bug.

As is Resurgence not working correctly when you take the Queen Ascendant trait; this one should be fixed for the next build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Polls
I don't understand why the blues are continually putting up these random and completely arbitrary polls that mean nothing for the well being of the game. Blizzard, why don't you look at the reaction to your game and understand the discontent that people have with it. Start by bring up some polls that narrow down what people hated about trashran and what they liked about it, that way you can use that information to improve and create new content that will actually cater to what your player base wants.

It's pretty obvious that garrisons worked, maybe a bit too well. They are wonderful safe havens that allow people to make gold and relax without actually having to play the game, which is kind of counter intuitive. Create a poll narrowing down what people liked about their garrisons and what they didn't like.

Just some odd suggestions, I expect this thread to be censored and/or moved to the garbage can, but hopefully it resonates for a second
Polls aren't generally meant as a means for collecting feedback. They are designed as a way to engage the community in interesting/entertaining topics. (Hopefully - At least for those who choose to take part.)Feedback occurs on these forums and in the game (among other places) and is ongoing. We read/watch/collect as we go.

When we have used polls in the past for collecting information it's been done very deliberately and with much care due to the inherent pitfalls polls can present such as a smaller portion of the community taking part or undue weight being put on the results by those who did take time to vote.

We (in community) spend a lot of time thinking about the need to manage expectations because if we over promise we've failed to deliver. If we under promise, we're not telling people enough of the 'real' news. It's a like walking a slackline (tightrope is so yesterday). We have to maintain balance or at least try to maintain balance.

I would hope that the devs have better metric tools. They can put in measurements to see what we're doing and use that to see what people are actually doing. Not just complaining about
Yep. They do. We watch for what people are both saying and what they are actually doing in game.

I assume that Blizzard has some really smart people that can do amazing math with data. I guess they do more than purely look at what people do as Ashran probably would have been really highly rated based off of that metric. (For some of the expansion it was practically required, and the easiest way of getting a reward) It makes me wonder if what people spend the most time doing is related to enjoyment or reward. Eh, I know they probably have a whole team dedicated to looking at many different sets of data to try to find what is enjoyable, not just usage time.
We have some wicked smart people here that can drill down into the data. It's true. As with anything, the data tells a lot of the story, but not the whole story. Being able to understand "why" is also looked into which includes what people are saying. Thus why it's so important to put the two together. We have a much larger pool of information that comes from within the game and the vocal community while passionate enough to speak up, aren't the majority so we have to be careful about how we weight the types of feedback.

Polls as a tool can be used in many ways. For us, the larger value is more in engaging than getting wide ranging thoughts and opinions.

There will always those who are fine with "still working on it" and those who aren't and see it as giving something and then taking it away when it doesn't happen. It's not anyone's 'fault'. It's just human nature. It's why the study of human behavior is such a large wide-reaching field and there are so many books on just what makes people tick. But those will never encapsulate what all people want and neither can a poll.

*Yes, we know what you did last weekend. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Undead and Forsaken
Could we possibly get new models for the Forsaken and other undead to reflect the race they were prior to becoming undead?

I highly doubt a huge Tauren would look like a humanoid. And I highly doubt that only Humans can be turned once dead.

I would love to see models of each race that's playable, have an undead version to them. Well, excluding the Worgen, which aren't a race, but a group of cursed humans. And last time I checked, the Worgen Curse made you immune to the curse of undeath, and yet there are Worgen DKs. I still don't get how that works.

Anyway, I'd love for us to have the option to select Forsaken as our race, then choose the race which we once were, if we want to pretend there's a backstory to our new character, then customize how that character will look (like we do with the current ones in the human forms they have).
The Forsaken are by and large Lordaeron humans who were raised from death by minions of the Lich King, who were rallied to action by Sylvanas against the Dreadlords Balnazzar, Detheroc, and Varimathras. The Forsaken adventurer that a player would control in Azeroth has a full-featured story that you can experience in their starting area that will help explain the nature of being Forsaken versus being Undead.

While many races can live in Undeath, these races would not be part of the Forsaken faction of Undead, which is why you don't see them as playable. I would think you would be much more likely to see Undead Death Knights of various races than to ever meet a Tauren who was living in Lordaeron at the time of the death of King Tereneas, which is basically the only possibility of finding a Forsaken that is a Tauren.

As far as I know, and feel free to correct me, the Forsaken are specifically those Undead Humans and a number of Undead High Elves from Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas who pledged their allegiance to Sylvanas and The Horde following the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne.

TLDR; Undead doesn't mean Forsaken (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Greetings everyone,
I wanted to provide some insight into the 6.2.4 patch and hopefully, answer outstanding questions you may have regarding features and areas to test.

In 6.2.4 World of Warcraft will transition to a new Battle.net infrastructure. While this infrastructure change contains a multitude of backend improvements for communication between WoW and Battle.net, there are also a number of changes that will directly affect you. It is our goal to make sure these changes don’t negatively impact existing systems, and functionality remains as it was prior to this migration.

To help us with this task, we’d like PTR testers to focus on the following areas:

• Social features, including whispers between characters, different Blizzard games, the Battle.net app and other in-game characters.
• Realm List functionality.
• Authentication, logging in, and security features.
• Parental controls.
• 3rd party add-on functionality.
• In-game shop functionality.
• Character Boosts.
• Faction, Race, and Name changes.

Development for patch 6.2.4 is ongoing so there may be issues during testing regarding things like logging in and selecting realms. Random disconnects from Battle.net may also occur. It is important that things of this nature are reported in the forums to help ensure a resolution before 6.2.4 goes live.

I hope this provides a little more insight into what PTR testers should be on the lookout for in this patch. Thank you all for helping to make World of Warcraft an epic experience time and time again!

only time you see calls for someone to be fired is coaches & game designers "My happiness trumps your livelihood!" (holinka)
no. People work hard for their money. Asking 65 bucks for a game means people feel entitled to quality.
I've paid $65 for a meal out before. If things don't go well I don't ask that people get fired. I might complain and that's fine. (holinka)
Hell I've paid hundreds/thousands of dollars to get my car fixed. They often don't do it right and I am mad as hell. (holinka)
But I just ask them to make it right, I don't insist they fire someone. (holinka)
So your "I worked hard for this $65 so you should fire someone when I'm not happy" is malarkey. (holinka)
But I'd guess after that you think two or three times before giving them repeat business eh?
Yes and that's 100% okay to me. (holinka)

Legendary Item Cap
At the start of the expansion, only one legendary at a time can be equipped so that while extraordinarily lucky people will have more choices about which to use when, they won't be significantly more powerful than somebody that isn't quite as lucky. As the expansion progresses, the number of legendaries that can be equipped at once will go up, although still limited to a relatively small number of slots.

They can come from anywhere, with more difficult content having a higher likelihood of dropping them (for equivalent time spent). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Legendary Effects
I feel that the issue is that this type of legendary will even be allowed into the game. I haven't spoken to a single person that doesn't think they'll be a nightmare for raiders. Even one of these items can offer a ridiculous power difference for certain spells/classes.
As you note, there is a massive amount of tuning yet to be done here. A legendary that makes you unkillable, or that doubles your damage, is not a legendary that will be going live in that form. We're testing a lot of different ideas. Some need numbers adjustments; others may prove impossible to tune or unfun. Alpha is alpha.

But if we're in a space where items being powerful and transformative is unacceptable, then that feels like a problem. Marginal passive stat increases, like replacing your bracers that have 93 Haste with bracers that have 105 Haste, are certainly easy to balance and safe. They're also pretty dull. And rewards should be anything but. Currently, completing set bonuses or getting powerful trinkets are some of the more rewarding moments, and those offer powerful effects comparable to many of the planned Legion legendaries. In a way, things like the Archimonde trinkets in Patch 6.2 were a preview of how some of these effects might interact and transform gameplay. We wish more items felt like those, and fewer felt like getting that bracer upgrade.

Way back in the early days of WoW, getting a Hand of Edward the Odd out of a strongbox was like winning the lottery, and every enemy you killed had the potential to be that lucky ticket. Over the years, loot delivery mechanics and their impact have become more and more streamlined, often at the expense of excitement. Legendary items offer a bit of that classic feel.

That said, in addition to the overall unique-equipped limit, our current thinking is that there will be a suppression aura in effect on Mythic raids for the first X weeks after a given raid zone opens, disabling legendary items' special effects (they will still function normally as high-ilvl regular items). This will serve to limit any perceived unfairness in the progression "race," while also serving as a self-nerfing mechanism that can kick in once that race is done. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Epic Battle Pets
Hi! We are testing out the impact of epic battle pets and training stones. This is a good thread for feedback (Muffinus)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Guardian
Hey, just wanted to pop in to let you all know about an upcoming change that didn't quite make it into today's build: Lacerate is going to be replaced with Swipe (Bear). It'll be no cooldown, free, with AoE damage somewhere between Lacerate's direct damage and Moonfire's direct damage (i.e., it'll be your lowest priority ability for single target, but offer on-demand AoE if needed).

EDIT: There are several other changes still coming to Guardian-specific talents as well, to add some more interesting gameplay options on rows where there were too many passive choices.

We look forward to feedback once you've gotten to test it in the next build! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Mistweaver Round 2
The goal of Spirit of the Crane and Rising Thunder is to enable a playstyle that incorporates melee attacks while healing, for those who desire it (note that Holy Paladins have some similar ablilities and talents, and much of this discussion applies to them as well). We intend for you to be able to use these abilities naturally in dungeon and raid content, without being unfairly punished for being in melee range. However, the Mistweaver situation in Warlords, where the spec is never targeted by a wide range of abilities (even though, the vast majority of the time, it has no need for such treatment) is not one we're happy with. Our goal is to be more judicious about exactly which encounter abilities, if targeted at Mistweavers or Holy Paladins, would preclude playing the spec as intended.

For example, a Chain Lightning or Void Zone targeted at a random player with no warning will wipe or seriously disrupt the group if ever targeted at a person in a melee clump. If you can get targeted by it, there is no option but to avoid being in melee at any time during the encounter. Mistweavers and Holy Paladins should not be targeted by these sorts of abilities.

On the other hand, imagine a debuff that requires you to move away from other players for a short time or move to a certain location. In many cases, we exempt melee DPS from such abilities not because it would wipe the raid, but merely because reducing their effectiveness to near-zero for many seconds would be overly frustrating. We are much less concerned about asking Mistweavers or Holy Paladins to respond to these kinds of mechanics, because they can still use most of their abilities and be reasonably effective while briefly out of melee. In these cases they'd simply be handling the same mechanics that other healers were required to handle.

In summary, choose these talents on alpha like any others and use them as you'd expect, and feel free to report any situations where doing so causes problems that you have no way to avoid.

------------

A few other things:
--We are planning to revise Sheilun's Gift, as we agree it is rather bland.
--Essence Font should be reasonably effective on as few as 6 targets. Tuning is still in progress as always, but the current version should slightly exceed unbuffed Vivify in terms of throughput and efficiency at around that amount (and if not, we'll take a look at that). It will only get relatively stronger from there as the number of targets increases. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
[Feedback] Demonology Warlock
A clarification on this (weird-looking) change: The build was made while we were in the middle of changing Demonic Empowerment. It'll actually be no cooldown/charges at all, just always freely usable. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Today’s alpha build is a smaller update, but still contains a few noteworthy things:

• Class Status – We’re continuing to iterate on our class abilities and talents, based on testing and feedback. This build has many revisions scattered around the classes, but here are some highlights:
• Fury Warriors – Significant iterations on the core combat abilities. A few more talent changes are still yet to come.
• Mages – Significant revisions to their level 30 talents, and a few related baseline utility abilities.
• Death Knights – Wraith Walk added to aid mobility. Several new/revised talents across all 3 specs.
• Protection Warriors – Several revisions to talents and core rotation.
• Demon Hunters – Numerous changes across both specs and talents.
• Shadow Priests – Voidform is now an active ability.
• Retribution Paladins – Many talents revised.
• Marksmanship Hunters – Significant revisions to core combat abilities and talents.

Thanks, and we look forward to your feedback!

Today's build update mainly contains bug fixing and ongoing iteration for the current zones, artifacts, and class specs. So while no new class specs or zones are contained in this build, there's still a lot of value in providing a more recent snapshot of the game for you all to test and give feedback on. Fresh is good!

The system requirements for Legion are much higher than the requirements for Warlords of Draenor. Make sure your computer meets these requirements before purchasing the Legion expansion.

The system requirements for Legion differ from the requirements for Warlords of Draenor. Make sure your computer meets these requirements before purchasing the Legion expansion.

Is the 5.3 bickering between the Alliance PC and Vol'jin canon? It seems OOC of Vol'jin to threaten in the manner that he did.
Definitely canon. And besides, Alliance players who called his bluff when he threatened could make him back down. (DaveKosak)

.I can repeat the Bodhi Pet Battle world quest over and over on same toon. Received rewards every time. Intended?? #LegionAlpha
it's a bug, new tech not quite ready to unleash PB quests officially, but feel free to give feedback as you find them! (Muffinus)

If you've bought the transmog appropriate to your armour class from the Barracks, will that translate to all amour classes 1/2
No. Each armor set from the Garrison Barracks must be acquired separately. (WarcraftDevs)

Just to confirm: Patch 6.2.4 DOES NOT remove the moose?
Correct. (WarcraftDevs)