3/9 Alpha Build Design Notes
Void Bolt's cooldown is no longer affected by haste in this build, assuming this is a bug.
This is a bug and should be fixed in the next build.
The 1.0 sec GCD floor is disappointing news. Do Shadow Priests just need to have awkward haste caps all expansion as a result of GCD overage and Void Form stacks?
Voidform gives some added room to below the 1.0 GCD floor so that you don't hit it during normal play (you may during Surrender to Madness). (
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Death Knight (
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Frost Death Knight Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
It's okay that Obliterate doesn't scale well with Haste, and it's okay that it isn't Frost damage (Mastery never affects all your damage), but it's not good that it falls behind on both. This causes the contribution from Obliterate to fall off as the expansion marches on even if your relative proportions of Crit/Mastery/Haste stay the same. We're making a change in the next build to address this.
- The frequency of Killing Machine procs will increase as you gain Haste
and as you gain Crit chance. Additionally, we're going to make Killing Machine proc only off critical autoattacks to reinforce this change.
Keep posting! (
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Unholy Death Knight Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Lingering Apparition's tooltip is corrected for next build -- its functionality in this build is the intended one. It reduces e the cooldown of Wraith Walk by 15 seconds and increases its movement speed by 30% (to 100%). The duration change to 3 seconds affects all specs.
It's also worth mentioning that the animation for Wraith Walk is, um, very placeholder.
With regards to AE, Unholy should be at its strongest when there are multiple targets present for an extended period of time, especially if they are clumped up. We need to do some work on the spread of damage contribution -- almost everything needs to come up a little bit, especially the abilities that give the spec "rot" damage (Festering Strike/Scourge Strike are unlikely go up by much). We don't plan to change Death & Decay's baseline uptime right now - using it skilfully is a good opportunity for Unholy players to shine in short AE windows. Epidemic should offer an additional way to deal damage in a very prolonged AE situation, and is especially good against swarms of enemies. (
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Blood Death Knight Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
It is not a design goal for Bone Shield to be difficult to keep up. Blood, percentage-wise, is intended to have the strongest reactive tanking mechanic (Death Strike) and the lowest preventative damage reduction (Bone Shield) of all of the tanks. That means that the focus of the player's attention needs to be on using Death Strike well to be a good tank. Having Bone Shield be relatively easy to keep afloat frees up mental space and class resources to improve Death Strike usage in an effective manner. When using Death Strike isn't the right thing to do in the next GCD, the choices of pooling resources, making sure Bone Shield stays afloat, properly utilizing Death & Decay, Blood Strike, and Blood Boil plus all of the other things tanks are expected to do is a large space to display player skill.
Haste is only devauled as described here when you achieve global cooldown saturation. Given the recent secondary stat changes and how many times we have adjusted the rotation to increase GCD utilization so far this year I will be very surprised if GCD lock is an issue outside of Heroism/Bloodlust. (
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Feral Druid Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
When you say its tuned low, are you aware of its current interaction for us? It doesn't actually effect bleeds at all. I would say thats NO tuning in regards to our abilities. Its actually close to a completely worthless stat at the moment in comparison to everything else (even Versatility, and people don't really enjoy this stat either). So i would say, design is where the issue is. Bleeds where not designed to interact with haste, vice versa.
No, there's no intention for Haste to affect Bleeds. As far as we can tell, the idea that Haste is worthless is based on live tuning, not alpha design. There's no design issue with Haste for Ferals that we see, merely tuning. We'd love to hear what the concerns actually are, if any.
Since a majority of our damage comes from bleeds, and a majority of the talents on our artifact boost bleeds, and there are specific talents which boost only bleeds and Haste does not boost any of that damage there is a concern. We have almost unlimited energy right now and it does not make gameplay better. Gone is the energy pooling and methodical rotation. So Haste making us have even more energy does not seem a benefit nore does it fit well with our class fantasy and as evidenced by live having more than we know what to do with doesn't make us better.
I think you just identified the tuning issues, no?
As long as haste does not benefit bleeds, haste will continue to be poor unless its contribution to our direct damage is substantially increased to compensate. That is a design issue, not a tuning issue, because the problem cannot be resolved without changing the mechanics of the spec.
Mastery doesn't affect all of Feral's damage, yet is of high value. Similarly, Haste could be of high value, if things were tuned differently, without affecting all of Feral's damage.
At its core, Feral's damage is made up of direct damage (Autoattacks, Shred, Ferocious Bite), and bleed damage (Rake and Rip). Haste improves the direct damage, and Mastery improves the bleed damage. Balancing both sides of that relationship ensures that Haste and Mastery stay balanced. There are many elements on both sides of that equation (and thus, many tuning knobs). Baseline ability costs and damage, and especially talents. (People also commonly forget the impact talents have on stat values, only paying attention to whatever the current meta follows as the highest DPS talent selection.
Currently on live, that equation is rather unbalanced in favor of the bleeds. That's supported by base damage, and heavily reinforced by talents that favor them (Bloodtalons most of all), and a current tier set bonus that effectively acts as a large amount of Haste (reducing the value of more Haste). If the direct damage were stronger, and Haste-favored talents (such as Lunar Inspiration) were stronger, and set bonuses were different, that could swing the other way.
Artifacts are a new wrinkle in balancing this equation for Legion, and we'll have to ensure that it doesn't skew that balance. I agree that artifact traits currently favor bleeds, and we can tune the artifact to solve that, and also tune the core abilities to assist.
We'll get there, and we'll certainly find the assistance of the Feral theorycrafters valuable. Please keep an open mind, and consider all of the possibilities, not just the accepted meta. Thanks!
I agree that the core gameplay is looking really good right now (especially once the T18 set bonus is gone), and we don't want to change that.
I don't think the gameplay will change much due to stat balance tuning, though. (At least, I'm not looking for it to change). In fact, unlike many of our rotations, I think the Feral one is fairly resilient to change. In many other specs, it can be a 'house of cards', where it's challenging to adjust tuning on one thing, without risking breaking the rotation when you consider some other talent setup or ability. Feral, however, is fairly elegant in its mechanics. To break it you'd have to really push some ability so far that Ferocious Bite beat Rip or something silly, which is easy to avoid doing.
Regarding the commonly suggested change of making bleeds tick faster with haste, we see that as solving the stat balance problem, while actually making a bigger problem worse. The fact that the direct damage is so much weaker than bleeds is a problem that we need to fix anyway. If Feral bleeds ticked faster with Haste, that would just be doubling down even further on "Bleeds are all amazing, DD is terrible, it hardly matters if you Shred/Bite well." The gameplay works best when you care about both sides of that situation. Making bleeds tick faster with Haste would just be pushing even more weight onto that side of the table. Making them balanced isn't going to change that gameplay about caring about bleed uptime. In fact it will increase the skillcap. The more unbalanced that equation is, the less skillfully balancing both of them matters.
EDIT: Had some further discussion with Tinderhoof and Purrowl and a few others in their chat. To summarize that:
Unlike Mastery, Haste affects your gameplay feel. You actually use more abilities, and your ratios of abilities changes. Mastery just makes your existing ability usage stronger. It's more passive.
Yeah, the T18 set bonus really hurt Feral gameplay, no question. And really really hurt the value of Haste.
Super simple illustration of what's wrong with Feral tuning right now, and why it's a tuning problem: Consider your finishers. Rip and Ferocious Bite. Haste gives you more Bites (and it does so at greater-than-linear rate; a little Haste significantly increases your Bite usage). But that's not valuable, if Bite is weak. Rip needs to be stronger than Bite for the rotation to work, but the larger that difference, the more Mastery beats Haste. Right now, in Legion raid gear, a single Rip cast will likely do ~1.2million damage. A single Bite cast will likely do ~300k damage. That's an astoundingly massive difference. With a difference like that, it's no wonder that Haste sucks. But if that Bite did ~1.0million damage, nothing about your rotational priorities would change, but you'd value Haste more, and you'd value efficiently generating and using your combo points more.
The same can be said about Rake and Shred. Rake currently does ~500k, and Shred does ~130k. Again, no wonder Haste sucks, when all it gives you is more of those ~130k Shreds, not more Rakes.
Looking forward to how we might solve this... Energy regeneration will likely look something like what it was in early Warlords, before T18 set bonuses gave you too much energy to know what to do with. The simplest starting point is to literally triple the damage of Shred and Ferocious Bite. I don't know offhand if that's too much or too little, but it's something in that ballpark.
The goal for Rip vs Ferocious Bite tuning is that Rip is "clearly stronger", but that can be achieved with a difference of 15%-30%. It doesn't need to be 300% stronger. Same goes for Rake vs Shred, or Moonfire vs Shred.
I hope this helps clarify things. We hope to be on the same page as you all, especially for theorycrafting collaboration. (
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Beast Mastery Hunter Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Would still like some control over Hati, only way I can get it to stop attacking anything is if I unequip my weapon. Is Bestial Wrath meant to make you, your pet and Hati translucent and slightly red or is that broken?
Hati
should (may still have bugs) follow all commands you give your pet.
Beast Mastery is a Focus-based spec, so should not be GCD-locked. Talent choices allow you to customize how high your GCD utilization is.
Bestial Wrath making you partially transparent is a bug.
Why would a focus based spec not be GCD locking? We've historically been the poster boy class for filled GCDs and high APM workflow, so I'm assuming there's a different thought process regarding what involves being GCD capped (like cast times).
edit; to clarify here, there's nothing wrong with a hunter spec being designed around having downtime, but I don't think "because you use focus" is the reason.
It's a spec that uses Focus as its primary resource, and doesn't have a spammable filler, nor any form of variable Focus consumption. If it were GCD-locked, Focus would be pointless. (
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Marksmanship Hunter Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
increased GCD on top of that makes it even harder to maintain those short duration debuffs on target...
Aye, the durations of Deadeye and True Aim will be going up in adjustment. I believe there's an artifact trait that will be adjusted as well.
No, it's not intended that Patient Sniper doesn't apply to Windburst. (
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Frost Mage Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
1) One of the "major talents" - It's Cold Outside - will be completely useless if you take the Lonely Winter talent, for those people who want to play with no pet to worry about. You should add something to that talent for Lonely winter players
I believe it already does. Anywhere a trait buffs an ability that is replaced with a talent, the trait should buff the talent instead.
Ice Floes + Glacial Spike should work, just a bug. (
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Mistweaver Monk Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
That's a bug; RSK's cooldown should be back to what it was next build. (
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Windwalker Monk Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
The change to Rising Sun Kick's cooldown accidentally broke it for Serenity interaction; that'll get fixed. With that fixed, Serenity should be working pretty solidly with the new Mastery. It does cause you to cap Energy, but that's expected when you make everything free.
Storm Earth and Fire: Is it possible to have guardians like from Storm, Earth, and Fire give xp/loot credit if they attack something and kill it without us cleaving onto it? If we pull 3 mobs with SEF and they don't group up perfectly to get cleaved by FoF from our main body, or we don't actively target them, then we get no loot or XP.
This is on our list to investigate. We'll likely be able to make it count as long as an ability damaged them, not just the SEF's auto attacks.
Eye of the Tiger: Is it suppose to roll damage/HoT from every Tiger Palm or just refresh duration? Is the debuff only suppose to be able to be on one target?
Refresh. It's a single target DoT to maintain. It's intentionally the very passive option on the row, if you prefer that gameplay.
Chi Orbit: A couple builds ago this ability was changed to move much slower around you and in a weird path that usually ends with all 4 stopping in front of you. The orbs are too close to the player and don't always hit the target you're right in front of.
Sounds like just bugs. They should smoothly orbit around you.
Power Strikes: I have never liked this ability as WW. On paper is looks fine, but in a raid encounter the extra chi usually comes when I'm not expecting and ends up getting wasted by either capping and not dropping an orb (bug), or dropping the orb while moving so I would have to go out of melee range to pick up the chi orb.
This is improved (solved?) in Legion. It just saves it until you can benefit from it, no more orb, no more potential waste.
Healing Elixirs: Tigereye Brew 1.5 min cd and Energizing Elixirs 1 min cd are the only 2 abilities that we have now to activate this talent (besides dropping in health). Could this be changed to be a usable ability similar to the rogue healing flask or switch what the ability procs off of?
In what ways is the automatic trigger on getting knocked low not sufficient? The trigger on ability use is supposed to be just gravy, on top of that.
The only problem I see in the current iteration is the fact that you can be at 3 chi out of 5 with the talent, The buff procs, Tiger Palm, and the buff goes away. Meaning you use up the buff first, but un-intentionally wasting a chi builder from Tiger Palm.
If it allows for the full Tiger palm chi generation plus the Power Strikes (meaning it only gets used up when you tiger palm at 0, 1, or 2 chi) then it would be useful. But currently in my API, I have to force the simulation to ONLY Tiger Palm at 0, 1, or 2 chi while the buff is up, otherwise Tiger Palm at 0, 1, 2, or 3 chi.
This will be fixed.
Any way with the new Haste changes that we could get Fists of Fury to behave like other channeled spells (Drain Soul, etc) and have Haste add an extra instance of damage?
Channeled spells do not get additional ticks with Haste.
-SEF:
Clones still jumps to monsters out of combat pulling extra stuff. THEY STILL jumps to critters too.
Im really scared to use them in dungeons atm so im not sure if I like the new SeF or not.
This will be fixed. (
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Holy Paladin Feedback
Good feedback, thanks! There will be some upcoming changes to the Holy Paladin PvP talents soon. (
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Subtlety Rogue Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
The bug that I mean is activating Shadow Dance and not having the stealth bar pop up.
This is not a bug. The thought is that there are so few buttons that require stealth, it's not worth having stealth be a forced separate action bar (it still can be, through macros/addons if you prefer). That's certainly subjective, of course, and we're interested in feedback from everyone on that.
One of the most common feedback topics here is AoE; we're not ignoring that. Subtlety AoE is divisive, for sure. Some like it (and so aren't posting here), and some dislike it. We're fine with that. Subtlety has a very different, but extremely strong in its own way, form of DPSing in AoE situations. If it's a style you're not comfortable with, it's OK to prefer other specs that have more traditional forms of AoE gameplay.
There's also discussion about talents. Subtlety is trying to satisfy a wider variety of players than before, and its talents reflect it. Something that "should be baseline" to you, is likely "avoid at all costs" to someone else, and so fits well as a talent. There's definitely tweaks we can do to talents to improve them, and we'll continue iterating, though. (
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Assassination Feedback
Relevant to this thread, but we found a bug with Assassination's Death from Above that is causing it to hit way harder than intended. We'll be fixing shortly. (
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Restoration Shaman Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Ancestral Protection Totem's effect is not intended to consume a combat resurrection charge in raids (if it did, it would provide no benefit to a raid group). Please let us know if you see it do so on alpha. As people surmised, the changes in this build are meant to bolster the intended use of the spell--protecting the raid during what the Shaman deems to be the most dangerous portion of the encounter.
While Ancestral Vigor shares the name of the similar effect from past expansions, it does not have nearly the same consistent raid coverage or uptime, which may be coloring the first impressions. It is a powerful effect and can be tuned however necessary during the alpha while observing its uptime in practical situations.
A damage cap on Ancestral Protection Totem triggering (much like Guardian Spirit, which is the spell most similar) is something we've discussed and have always known is an easy option if it winds up being needed. That said, if the only major concern with the talent is that it will be abused in a Mythic raid context to break encounters in problematic ways, there is the entire alpha (with most raid testing yet to come) to give specific feedback on encounter situations. The argument that there is a serious problem will be better handled in the context of real examples that we can evaluate and decide how to handle. Bear in mind that we have a default preference for class abilities to work as advertised in all game situations.
Please do give the feedback when you have significant examples however; this is exactly what alpha/beta is for, and this is an unusual ability that we want to watch throughout. All this is is to say--we don't necessarily want to have the world where new and unusual class abilities are filtered through a gauntlet of potential high-level raid problems (or severely premature analyses of Mythic raid compositions) and "fixed" before they've been played with in that context or in any other. Most broadly, as always, the best mode of alpha feedback to describe actual experiences (positive and negative) from playing the game. (
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Destruction Warlock Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
In addition to the changes above, next build should have a significant buff to Grimoire of Service for all specs. We want to make sure it remains attractive as an all-purpose talent option for those who want to retain the standard Warlock-with-Imp/Felhunter/Felguard (based on spec) profile. (
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Affliction Warlock Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Hopefully there will be a buff or some way to track how many souls are active so we know exactly what our buff will be.
The button will show it.
Mana Tap is a talent that is loved by some people, and hated by some people. Being an optional talent, that's fine, as long as other competing talents are attractive gameplay to you; are they? Why or why not? Remember to ignore tuning; the "best" talent on the row, DPS-wise, is irrelevant at this point. (
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Demonology Warlock Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Doom has an awkward mechanic I noticed, sometimes it won't refresh at all even when hard casting it because however they coded it to make it so it doesn't store partial ticks.
You should be seeing "A powerful spell is already active" if you recast Doom on a target that already has Doom and is not near the end of its duration. If your cast fizzles out with no error, that's a bug.
Hand of Doom works the same way--this does mean you can have minor gaps in Doom uptime with Hand of Doom, but the talent's value is not significantly impacted. (
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Arms Warrior Feedback -- Build 21249 -- 9-Mar
Double Time is even harder to take now, as it competes with a damage effective Storm Bolt and Shockwaves AoE stun. I really don't like this restriction on mobility, but I'll excuse it if you finally give us a Kills reset the CD on Charge.
Storm Bolt and Shockwave are no longer DPS gains. They're now utility. (
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It proves that people are getting old. Zarhym needs change, it was 11 years? Dang it, everyone needs some change after 11 years. Or maybe personal problems, issues with family or health, hope not, but anything can happen. I wish him the very best.
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