Patch 5.4 Dev Round Table, October 7 Hotfixes, RBG Adjustments, Blue Posts, Fan Art

[chaud]

D3's Barbarian Origin, Update on Lag in Public EU Games, Blue Posts

Blue Posts - NA & EU Beta Wave, Arena Gold Bug Resolution; Closed Beta Known Issues

WoW Source: Patch 5.4 Developer Round Table
Blizzard released a video that gives an overview of Patch 5.4 and then answers some of your questions.

• Over 50% of Flex Raids last week had 2 or more raid sizes, so people are really making use of the flexible size feature.
• Roughly the same amount of people did a flex raid last week as the number that did scenarios.
• The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well.
• Adding things in the world to discover while leveling will also be a goal moving forward.
• As far as storage space goes, choosing what to keep is part of the gameplay. No matter how much bag space players are given, it will always end up being full.
• Heirlooms are taking up a lot of space, so a centralized storage like the one used for pets and mounts is being worked on. The toy items added in Mists of Pandaria also take up a lot of space, so a similar solution for that would also be ideal.
• Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players.
• The Gnome race didn't exist when the original WoW cinematic was being worked on, which is why they didn't appear in it. There hasn't been a good opportunity to showcase gnomes in a cinematic since then.
• Patch 5.4.1 will add a new Refer a Friend system. The whole process will be moved in game, rather than requiring you to visit the site in your browser. The system will give you a token which you can redeem for the new mount, one of the other mounts, or a pet.
• Blizzcon will have "an exciting glimpse into the future of WoW", as well as a live raid.

Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: October 7

Classes

• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Holy
    
    • To help address issues with input lag, Mastery: Echo of Light now heals for three times as much every 3 seconds (was once every 1 second). Total amount healed remains unchanged.
      
  • Shadow
    
    • To help address issues with input lag, Vampiric Embrace now heals every second instead of every time the Priest deals Shadow spell damage. The total amount healed remains unchanged.
      
  • Class Armor
    
    • Corrected an issue where the Tier-16 Shadow 4-piece set bonus was improperly applying the damage bonus to additional spells when multiple instant cast spells are cast at the same time.
      
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Corrected an issue with Cloak and Dagger that could allow Rogues to bypass some targeting and line-of-sight restrictions.
      

Creatures

• Evermaw's spawn is no longer tied to Dread Ship Vazuvius.
  
• Moonfang should now always drop something when defeated.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Siege of Orgrimmar
  
  • Spoils of Pandaria
    
    • Corrected an issue where Spark of Life had more health than intended on Flexible difficulty.
      
  • Garrosh Hellscream
    
    • Garrosh Hellscream should no longer use Malice against players who have an Iron Star fixated on them on Heroic difficulty.
      

Rated Battleground Ratings Adjustments

As you may be aware, we recently made a change to Rated Battleground queues that makes players wait until the match has ended to queue for a new Rated Battleground, even if they had left that match. This change allowed us to close a loophole some were using to artificially inflate their ratings, but unfortunately quite a bit of abuse had already occurred by the time we implemented the fix. Our goal now is to restore as much integrity to the Rated Battleground ladders as possible, and we’ll be doing that in two key ways.

During our next maintenance we’ll be lowering all Rated Battleground personal and matchmaking ratings for those above 2200 down to 2200. The abuse was widespread to a point that many legitimate players’ ratings have been inflated just because they’ve played against those who had used the loophole to boost their rating, and so we need to get everyone back to some equal footing. But secondly we’ll be taking action against the accounts for those who knowingly and purposely abused the exploit to boost their rating, which will result in more than just their rating being reduced.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on things, and looking to take swift action for any further issues.

The Crowd Chose You Buff

We're not really happy with how The Crowd Chose You is working out at the moment. We're exploring a few options for exactly what we'd like to do, but we will be changing it.

what's the PTR for?
I also totally get the concern that these sorts of changes should be happening on PTR and not live. In an ideal world, they would be. Thing is, the PTR is such a different environment, especially for PvP, that we really don't see the same sort of player behaviors on the test realms that we do on live. There's a lot fewer players, and those that do test aren't worried about getting high ratings as much as they are just trying out new changes.

That makes sense, and we don't really expect players to behave any differently than they do. It just means that, sometimes, issues that crop up on PTR don't extend to live. In this case, we saw the issues cropping up on PTR, but there was a reasonable case to be made that those behaviors wouldn't work on a live environment, where players would care more about their ratings, or the higher pool of players would mean those tactics weren't as successful as often. So, we decided to give The Crowd Chose You a shot, while also starting to think about what we could do if the issues persisted.

In hindsight, sure, it would have been better if we'd done something else to begin with, instead of making the change a couple weeks into the PvP season. Ultimately, we made a bad call, which is why we're working to make some changes now. Just be aware that making those calls isn't as simple as looking at how things are on the PTR. It can be pretty difficult to decide who to listen to sometimes.

Blue Posts

Soul Link + Unending Resolve glyph.
There's a huge difference between giving up major defensive cooldowns for a passive effect and just having a passive effect on top of everything else.

In the case the OP laid out, the Warlock is effectively sacrificing two major cooldowns: Unending Resolve, and either Demonic Sacrifice or Dark Bargain. That's a pretty hefty price to pay, and though it certainly seems to be a popular choice at the moment (and we can discuss whether or not it's too strong), it's still a choice. We like choices. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warcraft Story
My point is that I feel like for WoW to get exciting again we need a new storyline, new heroes and new villians that we can all love and hate.
This is not the first time I have been reading a comment like this, and it is one that I personally find to very interesting due to the vastness that is the Warcraft lore... There are so many different storylines in the Warcraft universe, some obviously more known than others, but which ones would be the most interesting ones for the future?

It could be cool if you guys would share some specifics on what you have in mind when you say that you want a new storyline... are you talking about a continuation of existing storylines, or a restart of the Warcraft storyline overall? Also, do you have a particular storyline you would find more interesting than others?

Some people have already answered questions like these in the story forum, sometimes quite extensively, but in this thread I think a few lines will suffice. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Fan Art
Some more Fan Art for the Tribute book!

[Varabently]

Awesome, thanks for posting.

[MrExcelion]

I'd love if they contracted Morgan Webb to do more of these

Seems like they're patting themselves on the back for Flex and Timeless Isle, but I think they did this a month too early, but then again, Blizzcon is next month. Flex and Isle were definitely a success on my high pop, not sure about the Censure aspect though. The low 1-3% drop rates and 100k coin grind are definitely keeping players engaged. Plus it's an insanely easy way to get charms. First Ship and Maw of the day gives me over 30 charms.

Interesting that you can get the Zhevra mount again. Not many with that mount.

[Resentful]

Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players.

What the fuck that's not correct at all!

[moveth]

I'm really glad to see that flex is a used feature. It really is a great addition to the game.

[|Dexter|]

It's amazing that I make it in the Dev Round Table that first question of Salvadore was of me

[MrKnubbles]

I'm liking flex so far.

[Armond]

Sad that excess question marks (and Lore's great reaction) were trimmed from this post.

[Murderdoll]

What the f that's not correct at all!

Yeah Im not quite sure what they were thinking when they made that comment. It certainly isn't the worst melee instance ever, but its far from melee friendly.

[Kaiarra]

What the fuck that's not correct at all!

I'm going to have fun listening to my melee sob in a corner when I tell them that the devs think SoO is a melee friendly raid.

But yeah haha melee friendly... no; I'm seriously starting to wonder if any of the devs actually raid as melee with that statement.

[PuppetShowJustice]

sigh @ Refer-a-friend revamp. Need to find two friends for new pet and new mount.

[Caesonia]

round table is a rectangle....gg

[Dextar]

"Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players."

I really think the Devs are playing a different game than I am.

[Pokot]

Is Timeless really that popular? I've found it to be somewhat of a lackluster.

[Durandro]

"Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players."

I really think the Devs are playing a different game than I am.

It is an odd statement indeed. My guild struggles if we bring more then one melee - and usually we prefer to have none at all.

Let's look at each of the fights:

Immersius - melee struggle to spread out enough to avoid the whirlpools, and avoiding swirl is much more difficult.
Protectors - other then the mind sear spell, its not too bad.
Norushan - so much AoE damage killing the big adds.
Sha of Pride - makes prisons awkward, not to mention having to run off to kill the big add.
Galakaras - fine for most of the fight, but right at the end it SUCKS for melee who have to run through the raid to spread out the fireball damage.
Iron Juggernaut - huge pain in the ass when being chased by bore mines, huge dps loss during seige pulse.
Dark Shaman - massive liability when the oozes spawn.
Nazgrim - having to run around after adds, one of which whirlwinds your face off? Not fun.
Malkorok - due to his tiny hitbox, melee are hopeless for helping absorb the void zones. And then stacking in front of the boss = getting parried loads. Urgh.
Spoils - prone to sudden deaths due to AoE. Massive dps loss when dropping bombs.
Thok - excellent if you can prolong phase one for ages. Utter joke in phase two, unless you're really living on the edge and just praying you're not next on the target list.
Blackfuse - might be okay on this fight. But I imagine they suck on the assembly line.
Paragons - no thanks.
Garrosh - won't be able to kill corrupted weapons at all. Or engineers. Shaman will require lots of running around. Overall horrible.

There's not one situation where I'd willingly take a melee over a ranged. Not one. And that sucks.

Bosses need larger hit boxes for non-tanks (might be complicated to program) or melee needs a little extra 'range' to do their attacks (even if its an extra yard that would solve many issues).

[khatsoo]

Flex raid + Oqueue has really added a lot to the game talking about my geared alters. It's the first time since it was released that I wouldn't care less about lfr.

[Nirty999]

The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well.

Rofl... good luck Blizzard

[Layla]

"The system will give you a token which you can redeem for the new mount, one of the other mounts, or a pet."



They better not fucking make the Zhevra available again.
And I really don't like how there may be an option to choose either a mount OR a pet from RAF.

Depending on the reward, I usually end up buying another WoW account and referring it so I can get the rewards, but I'd really hate to have to do it twice if I like both whatever the mount and pet are.



This is stupid. I DON'T LIKE CHANGE!

[DiscoGhost]

is it just me or is Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas seem like a self absorbed douche who likes to hear himself talk and thinks he is way smarter than everyone else.

[sociald1077]

Rofl... good luck Blizzard

Are you saying that you liked the 5.0 approach better? I cant say I'm a fan of Timeless Isle myself (I loved 5.1's approach) but its way better than what we got at release.