Armory Stats - Level 90 Boost Classes, Mar 18 Hotfixes, WoD PvP, Poll, Diablo Fanart

[chaud]

RoS Fan Art Contest Semi-Finalists Revealed, The Big CE Signing, "The End of Her Journey" Added to the Guide, Lag Info Needed

NESL Tournament Decklists, Deck Spotlight: Dreadmaker's Spellsword Rogue, Reconnect Feature

Heroes Developer Q&A #4 Recap - Talent System, New Talent UI

Armory Stats - Level 90 Boosted Character Class Representation
Today we are taking a look at what classes are being boosted to level 90. Unfortunately the only way we can tell if a character has been boosted to level 90 is when they are still wearing some of the starter gear. This is still the case for ~106,000 level 90 characters in our database, allowing us to see a snapshot of what classes were boosted to level 90.

We have included data for all level 90 boosted characters, all characters, all item level 510+ characters, and all characters that have killed Heroic Dark Shaman (as of late January). You can toggle on and off the data by clicking on the category in the legend.

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Patch 5.4.7 Hotfixes - March 18

Character Boost

• Boosted characters now start in the Shrine of Two Moons for the Horde and Shrine of the Seven Stars for the Alliance.
• Resolved a number of questing and phasing issues for boosted characters.

Classes

• Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Resolved an issue where Vanish modified by Glyph of Vanish was incorrectly causing the Subterfuge effect to trigger twice. Vanish will now cancel its effect when the duration of Subterfuge expires.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Siege of Orgrimmar
  
  • Cross-realm raid groups have been enabled for Siege of Orgrimmar on both Normal and Heroic difficulty.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

• Resolved an issue where Monks were unable to use Roll, Chi Torpedo, or Flying Serpent Kick while carrying the flag.

Isle of Thunder

• Resolved an issue where base camps for the Kirin Tor Offensive, Sunreaver Onslaught, and other areas on the isle may incorrectly revert to an earlier progression stage.

Warlords of Draenor PvP

There's a ton of awesome PvP-related stuff happening in Warlords. Just off the top of my head:

• CC Disarmament: there's a lot fewer CC spells, especially instant and auto cast CCs, and more shared DRs among the ones that remain.
• Health and scaling rebalance: means little to no Base Resilience or Battle Fatigue are needed, and classes that aren't as reliant on gear to perform. Also does wonders for PvP class balance.
• Ashran: our new open world PvP zone, which we're not quite ready to share details on yet (but what I've seen so far looks awesome!)
• Skirmishes: unrated Arenas that can be queued for either solo or in a group.
• Spectator invites & Tournament gear: additional tools to allow tournament organizers to run high-quality tournaments without needing direct intervention from Blizzard.
• Our new built-in Group Finder: much easier way to find party members for rated BGs or Arenas.

And that's just from the stuff we've already talked about. There's more to come as we continue development.

I know healer scaling was mentioned, but what about damage scaling? It has just gotten absurd how quickly damage scaled in MOP - we went from doing 60k dps to 400k+, which is why Battle Fatigue and PVP Resilience had to be set so high in the first place.

You need to hit the root of the problem NOW while you are doing the item squish - if you wait until after WOD then it will be too late and you'll have to do an item squish again for the next expansion.
So, there's actually a lot going on there:

Currently, in Mists, level 90 characters have a relatively high amount of base health, and a relatively low amount of base damage or healing on their abilities. As a result, your health from Stamina doesn't increase as quickly as your damage or healing from Attack or Spell Power. To use some made up numbers for perspective, your gear might account for 80-90% of your damage, but only 40-50% of your health. That's why, as the quality of your gear increases by hundreds of item levels over the course of an expansion, we see such a high swing in damage output compared to health pools.

For Warlords, we're simplifying that by making health and spell effectiveness scale a lot more linearly. Base health is being lowered dramatically (and the effectiveness of Stamina increased) to the point that as damage or healing goes up, health pools go up alongside them. That lets us ensure that PvP gameplay at low gear vs high gear feels relatively similar.

On top of that, we're increasing health pools in general -- they'll be much larger in comparison to the damage players are able to deal to each other than they are today. Resilience and Battle Fatigue were added because without them, an attack or heal would account for massive chunks of a player's health bar. With higher health, that same spell doesn't have as big of an impact.

(It's worth noting that all of this is after the item squish, so it's all relative. The actual numbers, including health pools, will end up much smaller compared to how things are today.)

Blue Tweets

Classes
Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
50% Lay on Hands?
We're actually planning to let that one stay at 100%, which is effectively a large buff. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
can you remove shadow orbs?
Virtually zero chance of us removing Shadow Orbs. (Celestalon)

SInce absorbs are going to be so limited is Disc going to have more direct heal throughput?
Yes, we'll make sure that they can still perform well. (Celestalon)

Why can't we have instant as disc/holy? Seems slightly unfair.
Because we want to make healers less mobile. Good for both PvE and PvP. Encounters will demand less mobile healing. (Celestalon)

Will cascade, divine star and halo still be instant for spriests, or will they need to be casted as well?
Yes, they're still instant for Shadow. (Celestalon)

still want to know what happens to disc barrier. the barrier forces me go disc, not lack of holy hps.
No planned changes to PW:B, but if encounters do less raidwide burst damage then PW:B is inherently less essential. (WatcherDev)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Seeing a big jump in Resto Shaman representation despite so few balance changes this season. This should be interesting to watch unfold. (holinka)
translation resto shammy is about to get nerfed
Just wanted the community to go on this journey with me where representation changes profoundly despite minimal class changes. (holinka)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Warriors getting a talent turning Prot into DPS spec. Any chance Warlocks could get a talent changing Demonology into tank spec?
Not right now. Turning Prot into DPS is trivial compared to turning Demonology into Tank. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
But is warbringer still a 20s cooldown for a single charge with a 1.5s stun? Seems like a high risk gambit for a chance to nix gate
Sounds like a tough choice you'll have to make (holinka)

Has there been any info about how you plan to improve haste for warriors yet?
Not yet. I can assure you though, haste will be a very good stat for you. (Celestalon)
Will it benefit tanks like prot pallies
Haste will be a very good stat for *all* Warriors. (Celestalon)
Please let it be more than just more rage which would result in more HS spamming.
It's more than just rage. (Celestalon)

Will Divine Shield be undispellable in WoD? Shattering Throw seems to be removed, what about Mass Dispel?
Shattering Throw is not removed. (Celestalon)

Art
Any chance to be able to toggle weapon enchants glow on/off (like helm/cloak) in WoD?
Doubtful for WoD unless as totally different enchants. Enchant visuals effects & control of does get discussed though. (Dave_Maldo)

Character / Items
The Heirloom Garrosh weapon. will the heroic version be as good as flex one while leveling?
They'll converge at 100, but a higher-difficulty one will be superior while leveling. (WatcherDev)

Warlords of Draenor Flying
without wasting 10-30 minutes of your time getting there and back to what you were doing.
I've been trying to say this, but if it takes you 10-30 min to get from one part of Draenor to another, we screwed up. (WatcherDev)
Meanwhile when you take a flight path in Mop you many times fly in circles to reach a destination.
Honestly we've neglected flight paths a bit post-BC. We won't make that mistake in Draenor. (WatcherDev)

Please make me want to not fly, dont force me not to.
The idea is that limiting vertical movement creates gameplay. Imagine how Timeless Isle would play if you could fly there. (WatcherDev)
yeah, but I hate going to TI. An entire expansion of that is going to suck.
And ultimately it's our job to make sure it doesn't. I realize I'm not going to change opinions here; all I can say is wait and see. (WatcherDev)
yes imagine being able to get to rares before they die.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, they'd still often die before you arrive since everyone else would get there faster too. (WatcherDev)
let's not buff their health pools to scale with number of attackers, that would be a silly notion
A majority of TI rares do have health scaling, up to a max of 500% HP. Some don't; will look into hotfixing those. (WatcherDev)

Poll: Level 90 Boost Classes
Assuming you bought Warlords of Draenor and used your Level 90 boost already, what class did you use it on?

Reaper of Souls Fan Art Contest Semi-Finalists
Blizzard is holding a fan art contest to celebrate the release of Reaper of Souls, with the entries now narrowed down to the top 25!

[Aesahaettr]

I used the boost on a warlock, so I now have 2 level 90 warlocks.

[Nexsa]

I think no flying will be fun..

[Avariia]

that art is amazing

[Anakonda]

I love the way you actually can't see priest graphs

[Deleted]

All the data looks like an influx of warlocks.. I got mine to 60 with a view to boosting it today.. not sure why there's so much lock love, even though I'm boosting one myself! Lol

[Thallidomaniac]

All the data looks like an influx of warlocks.. I got mine to 60 with a view to boosting it today.. not sure why there's so much lock love, even though I'm boosting one myself! Lol

The lack of DK and Rogue love is just as interesting.

Anyways, I boosted a Shaman on a completely new realm for me.

[Deleted]

So I'm not sure if I understand the diagram. The first bar are boosted characters and the second bar are all characters? I'm sure that can't be right, can someone explain.

[Rafzor]

So I'm not sure if I understand the diagram. The first bar are boosted characters and the second bar are all characters? I'm sure that can't be right, can someone explain.

They are each in relation to their own statistics.

So out of the all boosted characters this ammount was used on this class, and out of total characters (so boosted and unboosted all together) there is this percentage of this class.

You can click under the graph to choose what you wanna view as well.

[Airwaves]

Where is the vote for none? I already have every class. Don't see the point in a 2nd one.

[banur]

Where is the vote for none? I already have every class. Don't see the point in a 2nd one.

"Assuming you bought Warlords of Draenor and used your Level 90 boost already, what class did you use it on?"

not sure why there's so much lock love

Because locks are currently OP and players don't anticipate WoD changes, which WILL mix things up.

[Last Starfighter]

All the data looks like an influx of warlocks.. I got mine to 60 with a view to boosting it today.. not sure why there's so much lock love, even though I'm boosting one myself! Lol

Because warlocks are flavor of the expac. They got the most shinies in MoP. They have been OP the entire expac. Blizz made rolling warlocks "Cool". So in WoD you're going to see a massive population of warlocks. Everybody is boosting locks. By the time WoD rolls around it's going to be even worse.

[deathslover]

Havent done one yet still thinking of what one i want

[Moradim]

"letting lay on hands stay at 100%"

"buff"

this is the idiot in charge of class design?

[Keosen]

Holy shit, this artworks are stunning, i hate myself i can barely draw a straight line.

[Mekh]

"letting lay on hands stay at 100%"

"buff"

this is the idiot in charge of class design?

As all other healing in WoD gets nerfed by 50%, LoH grows extremely in relative power.

[Kaleredar]

That female witch doctor art, second row from top in the middle...

very interesting use of bird skulls...


Anyway... if it takes sub-20 minutes to get around the entirety of Draenor on foot, then how trivialized will the place be when they DO put in flying mounts?

If they had made timeless isle about three or four times larger with more striated terrain, they could have done a hell of a lot with flying mounts there without them being an impediment.

I don't feel that the issue should be "Well when we design things like the timeless isle was designed geographically, we can't use flying mounts." A much more encouraging sentiment would be "When we design things with flying mounts in mind, god willing we never end up with something like the timeless isle."

[zrankfappa]

I love the way you actually can't see priest graphs

Are you using windows or linux? If windows, check and see if your desktop is set to 32 bit color. if linux then your SOL.

[Zannypants]

Skirmishes: unrated Arenas that can be queued for either solo or in a group.

I see Ghostcrawler getting the boot is going to good use. Thank the %@$#ing lord he is gone.

[Demec]

Love how DK is on the bottom even it is the best class to level 60 and gain 600 professions.