New Connected Realms Coming, Oct 16 Hotfixes, Flex Mechanics Scaling, Blizzard Art

[chaud]

The Future of MF & GF in Paragon 2.0, Diablo 2 Battle Chest for $4.99, Patch 1.0.2 is Now Live on Xbox 360 As Well

New Connected Realms Coming
Realms are being connected faster now! Keep in mind that Bloodscalp, Maiev, and Boulderfist will make the first group of three realms.

As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional pairs of realms as listed below. We don’t have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we’ll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.

Next Realm Connection Pairs:

• Balnazzar and Warsong
• Gurubashi and Aegwynn
• Dalvengyr and Dark Iron
• Garithos and Chromaggus
• Onyxia and Burning Blade
• Maiev and Bloodscalp

We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Maiev, and...Bloodscalp?
You MIGHT want to clarify that it is US Bloodscalp, and Not the EU one. Might confuse some people.
All of the connections announced on the North American forums are for North American realms.

Patch 5.4 Hotfixes: October 16

Classes

• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Class Armor
    
    • Resolved an issue that could cause the Tier-16 2-piece set bonus Frozen Thoughts to be consumed without effect.
      
• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Holy
    
    • Mastery: Echo of Light's healing has been increased by 4%.
      
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Archimonde's Darkness' effect should now be correctly removed when the Warlock switches talents or glyphs.
      

Quests

• Timeless Treasures: Weekly treasure chests on the Timeless Isle can now grant credit towards completing this quest.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Siege of Orgrimmar
  
  • Galakras
    
    • Reduced the health of ranking officials and foot soldiers in Phase 1 of the encounter on 10-player Normal difficulty.
      
  • Kor'kron Dark Shaman
    
    • Ashen Wall, Toxic Storm, Toxic Mist, Foul Stream, and Foul Geyser now deal less damage on Raid Finder difficulty.
      
  • Spoils of Pandaria
    
    • Reduced the health of most of the creatures during the Spoils of Pandaria encounter on Raid Finder difficulty.
      
    • Having multiple players start the encounter should no longer incorrectly cause the timer to count down rapidly.
      
  • Thok the Bloodthirsty
    
    • Captive Cave Bats on Raid Finder difficulty will no longer incorrectly drop Normal difficulty loot.
      
  • Garrosh Hellscream
    
    • Garrosh Hellscream should now use his abilities more predictably when starting Stage Three: MY WORLD.
      
• Mogu'shan Vaults
  
  • Resolved an issue that prevented players from completing the Straight Six achievement.
    

Battlegrounds and Arenas

• [Requires a realm restart.] Silvershard Mines: The eastern mine cart now doesn't spawn in until shortly after the gates open.

Professions

• Cooking
  
  • Noodle cart chefs will now receive a well-fed buff while serving other players bowls of noodle soup.
    

Items

• Nazgrim's Burnished Insignia should no longer be incorrectly activating from actions that aren't helpful spells.
  
• Ticking Ebon Detonator should no longer be incorrectly activating from actions that aren't attacks.

Flex Mechanics Scaling

Thanks for some excellent feedback so far. Boss mechanics inevitably involve some breakpoints (alas, there's no way for Malkorok to create precisely 3.7 Implosions), and they do need to scale in some form, or abilities only targeting maybe 2 players out of a 25-player Flex raid would make some of those mechanics feel completely trivial and detract from the intended experience and tuning. In general, we try to err on the side of rounding down, and making sure that the ratios are never worse for any group size than they would be for a normal 10- or 25-player raid. Norushen orbs are a great example of a place where that logic doesn't quite work, though, since you actually want more orbs, and not fewer. That's something we can adjust.

Personally we have found 11 to be just about the hardest number. The difference in scaling between 10 to 11 is about 11mill HP. Now for a boss like the Iron Juggernaut, that’s fine. You pew pew the boss the whole fight. 11 mill over 5-6 mins is do-able. But, for a fight like Galakras where the boss is a burn at the end. That 11 mill is pretty tuff to make. Especially being flex so the extra members are not exceptional.

TL;DR the boss HP Scaling is a bit over tuned for 1-2 extra players. (on some fights)
A bit of clarification here: Boss health and damage scaling are both completely linear and proportional to group size, but scale up more slowly than raid size does. So, all else being equal, if you add players who are roughly on par with the average gear/skill of your current group, you'll have a slightly easier time as a result.

Thok, for example, has 355 million health with a 10-player Flexible raid. If you add an 11th player, his health will go up to 390 million. I.e., you've increased your raid's damage output by somewhere between 14 and 20% depending on how many healers you were running, but the boss's health only went up by 10%. Adding that 11th player will also make Thok melee for about 3% more damage, which will barely be noticeable.

Wait, what? He has like 440 million on 10 normal.
Whoops, sorry about that. I was looking at the LFR numbers. He has 355 million with 10-player Flex, and 390 million with 11 players. Same general point holds, but I goofed on the exact values.

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Blizzard Art Update
Blizzard has added more pieces to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria Art gallery.

[chaud]

Bonus for people that read the comments, some stuff I was looking at for fun tonight:

[moveth]

We didn't even notice the Galakras hotfix til after the fight. "Did that seem easier?" lol

[TrollShaman]

Hopefully from this point on, Blizz will server-connect the same amount of realms as the upcoming one.

[Oell]

Time to maybe focus on the EU realms aswell??!? It's like we dont exist...

[Deleted]

Time to maybe focus on the EU realms aswell??!? It's like we dont exist...

Indeed. Everything that happens is done on US realms like EU didn't exist. WTB some love for EU too.

[Venziir]

Have any EU realms even been connected yet?

[Orcindauh]

How bad did they nerf Galakaras? Anyone know a rough % of how much hp they lost?

We kill the adds so fast then have nothing to do until the next set, this is going to make the fight even more silent.

[Deleted]

Bonus for people that read the comments, some stuff I was looking at for fun tonight:

What's the difference between Character ilvl and Player ilvl ?

[Nobleshield]

We didn't even notice the Galakras hotfix til after the fight. "Did that seem easier?" lol

That might explain why adds were dying a bit faster than I remembered (although we still have coordination issues, too bad they can't hotfix that).

[chaud]

What's the difference between Character ilvl and Player ilvl ?

Character is calculated by using all characters, Player is calculated using only the highest item level character per account.

[Deleted]

Character is calculated by using all characters, Player is calculated using only the highest item level character per account.

So we can conclude that people on Mal'Ganis have better geared alts, while on Area 52 they have better geared mains. (assuming overall population is similar)

[Deleted]

Have any EU realms even been connected yet?

Nope, as usual EU comes behind US when it comes to importance to Blizzard.

No surprises there, for anyone.

[Shudder]

Noodle cart change is awesome. It will speed things up not having to wait for the chef to eat after all the slow pokes finally get to the cart. Will also stop the chef from being screwed over by getting one less bowl than everyone else.

[chaud]

So we can conclude that people on Mal'Ganis have better geared alts, while on Area 52 they have better geared mains. (assuming overall population is similar)

Area 52 has an avg player ilvl of 512 while MG is only 506.8. Area 52 has an avg character ilvl of 503.5 while MG is only 497.7.

That is why I was looking at distributions, to see if the avg was misleading. Area 52 apparently has lots of Timeless Isle and ToT geared alts (and more alts in general).

All the realms are listed in that spreadsheet I sneakily linked in the news. I wouldn't draw any real conclusions from the data until I have more confidence that I have a very complete data set though, which is why I didn't make it more a more obvious link. There might be lots of lower geared guilds I haven't come across yet on Area 52!

[Yunru]

Another dark shaman nerf in lfr...interesting.

[Asphyxiate9]

Now if only those sets looked as good as that concept art :P

[siccora]

isn't the art cataclysm??

[Kazuchika]

Oh boy a nerf to a fight where we already sat around half the time doing nothing.

Joy.

[Somebody]

Why do some rogue sets seem to imply self-asphyxiation?