World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

PvP
Really strange change?"Capturing a point in the following Battlegrounds now takes 6 seconds (down from 7 seconds)."
Open to hearing feedback on it. (holinka)
Seems unnecessary for the reasoning that ninja capping is already in a good place, making it easier seems too much.
Is it? Get a lot of feedback that maps like AB and Gilneas are very stagnant after initial captures. (holinka)
essentially you've turned team fight maps into ninja the ninja maps. When gy were the culprit.
I can see that argument for AB but not Gilneas. (holinka)

Misc
"spectacle creep" sounds like blaming the audience for not liking your product... >.>
Did you watch the video? Has nothing to do with blaming the audience, it's about how making things exciting gets more difficult. (Muffinus)
Guess MoP suffered from spectactle creep, but I personally enjoy the story as long as we don't regress in spectacle
I feel the opposite, MOP was pretty toned-down and relaxed imo, except for SoO. A nice breather. (Muffinus)

We regularly review our prices worldwide, and from time to time make changes in accordance with the conditions of the regional and local markets. As such, we want to warn you about adjustments to the price of game time in several Latin American countries. Also, we will update the prices of some services and items in the game, in Argentina, Chile and Mexico to bring prices more in line with other regions around the world.

Note that for recurring subscriptions, that is, for those who automatically pay with international credit card in dollars, the price will not change at this time.

The new prices, which are detailed below, will take effect from May 20, 2015.

(See the full post for all price changes, only gametime changes are listed below)

Argentina

• 30 days - No change
• 90 days - No change
• 180 days - No change

Chile

• 30 días - CLP 9.450,00
• 90 días - CLP 26.430,00
• 180 días - CLP 49.100,00

Mexico

• 30 días - MXN 185,00
• 90 días - MXN 525,00
• 180 días - MXN 980,00

Cosplay team Spiral Cats is known for their Blizzard-themed costumes, special effects, and craftsmanship. Their Grommash Hellscream costume was first revealed during the Warlords of Draenor launch event in Korea and is just one of many epic examples of their mastery. Check it out below.

Classes
Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
General

• Hand of Freedom is no longer usable while stunned.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Denounce is now removed completely by dispel effects (dispel effects used to only remove one stack at a time).

Bug Fixes

• [Hotfix in testing] Blood-Soaked Invitation should now convert into the correct Horde equivalent for Alliance characters performing a faction transfer.

Are you ready to see the Iron Horde go heavy metal? It all started last November, when Grommash’s celebration of the lineup announcement for Hellfest 2015 quickly ignited an epic conversation between Warcraft fans and metal fans.


With over 100.000 attendees, Hellfest is a massive metal music festival that no true orc would ever want to miss. Last year Grommash and his Iron Horde were too busy getting ready to invade Azeroth and didn’t have time for a detour to western France. This year, they are prepared…

So this summer, we’ll be there in person to take a closer look at what happens when these two worlds collide – and we’re looking forward to sharing the results with you.

We’ll have more information soon about what we’ll be doing there. Stay tuned because you won’t want to miss #WoWAtHellfest 2015!

Let me try to address a few of the concerns raised in the thread and explain our thinking.

First off, why this wacky raidwide effect? Why not a traditional legendary that is purely individual? The idea's origins lie in what this particular legendary is: a ring. It's not a weapon designed to strike foes, or a shield to protect you from harm. And what is the nature of a ring? Whether we're talking about seven rings for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, about Captain Planet, or about common social covenants in our own societies, rings tend to be paired with counterparts, and to have their meaning derived from the connections entailed therein. A lot of fluff, perhaps, but that's what got us thinking along the lines of a group effect rather than a personal one. This certainly isn't a template for all future legendaries, but we find it very fitting for this particular one.

Now, some of the concerns that have been voiced:

1) "It will be used mechanically on cooldown"

Sometimes, sure - it depends on the fight. The healing/tank versions certainly won't be used that way, and the DPS ring also has elements (notably the AoE explosion at the end) that add additional depth to the decision of when to activate it. Let's consider the fights in Foundry, since those are probably more familiar examples than Hellfire, and imagine how the ring might have been put to best use while progressing on a few of those encounters:

• Blast Furnace: Largely wasted if you use it on the pull; you might save the first activation for the second pair of Operators, and then during the second phase you'd aim for windows of Elementalist vulnerability, since that's what matters most.
• Operator Thogar: Here we run into some unique considerations associated with the explosion. You could activate the ring in advance of a Man-at-Arms wave, getting a damage burn on Thogar while you build up the potential AoE that will go off just in time to alpha-strike the dangerous enemies right as they jump off a train car.
• Flamebender: If you aren't running into her berserk, the Cinder Wolves are your main concern. You'd probably benefit from waiting until she's at 45 or so Energy, and timing the explosion to get a large head start on the Wolves. Especially on Mythic.
• Blackhand: Aside from the obvious uses to speed up phase 1 and phase 3, I could see having your initiating player as the person who's about to get knocked up onto a balcony with a fresh wave spawn due, timing the explosion to pretty much erase the whole wave of enemies right as they exit the door on the ledge.

Now, on something like Gruul, you probably would just use it on cooldown every time. But I'd say Gruul is more the exception than the norm.

2) "It feels bad to have someone else control my legendary"

This is a fair point, and I sympathize. Setting aside the fact that when doing any solo content you have complete control over the activation, there is still more control with this legendary than with nearly any of our prior examples. Procs could occur at completely inopportune times, often wasting them entirely, and whether you got lucky and had Xuen's cloak trigger just as a large pack of enemies got clumped together, or whether it fired 10 seconds earlier or later, could drastically alter your total damage on a given encounter.

At its core, the legendary ring is a raid item - the vast majority of the content and the collection steps take you through raid content - and players who are part of a raid group are by definition cooperating and coordinating to tackle challenges. The rings add another layer to that teamwork. Even outside structured guild raiding, it's neither typical nor tolerated in pickup groups for, say, a mage to use Time Warp to maximize personal damage at the expense of the raid, and I'd be surprised if it's common to see it done with the ring. Now, yes, in Raid Finder, though you also won't generally be seeing raids with tons of ring-wearers, you'll probably see some selfish behavior. But even then, the effect isn't wasted (merely suboptimal), and that action isn't likely to affect the group's success or failure on the encounter as a whole given Raid Finder's tuning.

3) "The effect isn't fair/balanced and is worse for than "

True. We could have made a perfectly evenhanded ring effect - something like "Equip: Increases damage and healing done by 10%." That also would have been very lackluster. Nearly any effect with any depth to it will benefit some more than others so long as our classes/specs have varied strengths and weaknesses. (And we don't feel that class homogenization is the answer, either.) Over the course of a fight, that may amount to a difference of a couple percent damage, if that. Hopefully we continue to make interesting and unusual items, and some of those will favor specs that feel the ring was suboptimal for them.

How do you address concerns that the design of the ring discourages raids from bringing people who don't have their ring to raids?
There's nothing in particular about the ring's design that discourages raids from bringing people who don't yet have it, as compared to any other type of legendary or any player-power increase. Players without the ring will do some percentage less damage (or healing, or have one fewer tank cooldown) over the course of the fight as a whole, but that's just the nature of any big-power item. It's not really different from the cloaks in Mists, or theoretical alternate versions of the ring that had no group synergy component. I'm sure that later in the expansion there will be guilds and pickup groups that strongly or exclusively prefer people with legendary rings, but that's a social dynamic that's nearly unavoidable with any form of player power progression, whether it's a specific legendary or just item level in general.

Also, as a separate clarification, I wasn't saying it that it won't be used on the pull. It absolutely will be used on the pull in the vast majority of cases. However, the cooldown is short enough that many other opportunities will arise to be more tactical with its use as the fight goes on, rather than just using it automatically every 2 minutes thereafter.

Finally, nothing in Hellfire Citadel is being tuned around having the ring. That's a big part of why it is not currently available to use in PTR testing. In Siege of Orgrimmar, many players had their cloaks before they first set foot in the zone on the day of the patch, which somewhat diluted the impact of completing the cloak since those players didn't really get a before-and-after comparison of specific fights once they'd earned it. Cutting edge progress in Hellfire Citadel, on the other hand, will occur without legendary rings in the raid. And then as raid members complete their rings, the power of the legendary will help you overcome Gul'dan's forces.

Flying
You know, last time i told a dev i like something, it was flying. Take a guess what happened short after.
Is your point: I'd like flying back in WoD? (Muffinus)
Yes, i really would.
We love feedback, don't be afraid to give it! No one is 'not listening' to you. Sorry if that hasn't been conveyed. (Muffinus)
Dont worry. I just would love to see a statement as like "Yes, we bring flying back in 6.2" or "No, we dont bring flying back".
Specifically, would like to hear what you miss about it! How would you ideally implement it? (Muffinus)
I miss the ability to start and stop when i like. Flight pathes take you out of the game.
For me, flying often felt the same. Fly up -> point self in direction -> afk. Agree/disagree? (Muffinus)

PvP
While I don't interact on Twitter any more i read tweets & forums & appreciate feedback. Thx. (holinka)

are the tombstones near the grave yard, and the cart on ruins intended to no longer provide LOS? They worked last patch
They were broken by 6.1. We tried to hotfix them in a number of ways but they were all problematic. Fixed in 6.2. (holinka)

Lore
Big debate going on; are the players in lore stuck on Draenor or was that changed?
Not by now - after escaping Tanaan and establishing garrisons, it's possible to open other ways home. (DaveKosak)

Misc
Look what I got for my birthday! Thanks, VO team! http://t.co/urtpQOi6AS (Celestalon)

This is !@#$ing disgusting. Another stupidly over priced mount after Blizzard announced their sub losses. Everyone knew that as soon as you announced the loss you would put the mount up. This is %^-*ing disgusting. Money greeding bastards who are clearly not listening or responding to the player base except when responding to a stupid advertisement on the launcher.
A lot of people have been excited for the mount since it was originally datamined in the 6.1 files back in February, and we actually get pretty regular questions on when it'll arrive. Originally it was planned to release much earlier but we decided to wait as it'd potentially add some complexities while we're still trying to launch the WoW Token in all regions (Korea and Taiwan had the WoW Token launch yesterday, for example). So the next available release timeframe was next week, and that's what we with.