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  1. #1

    Mischief Pet Delayed, Secondary Stat Changes, Survival Hunter, Developer Feedback

    Jay Wilson's Insights into Vanilla Development, Diablo Brawl Coming to Hearthstone

    Tri-Class Card Drop Rates Fixed - Affected Players Will Receive 33% of Packs Opened as Compensation

    Patch 7.1.5 - Legendary Vendor on the PTR
    You can hop onto the PTR and test out the new legendary items coming in Patch 7.1.5!



    Mischief the Fel Kitty Delayed
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    We were hoping it'd be available today, but don't worry folks, Mischief is coming soon! Keep an eye on the news page for when this fel kitty invades!

    Patch 7.1.5 - Secondary Stat Changes
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    The changes to secondary stat ratings in 7.1.5 have a few goals, and certain pieces are not yet in the current build.

    Goal 1: Increase the importance of item level as a guideline for upgrading items. Moreso than in the past, large item level increases are not a reliable indicator of an upgrade due to the variance in power of secondary stats on an item. Increasing the amount of rating that you need per percentage of a secondary stat tips the balance of an item’s power more heavily toward primary stat. We’re okay with very small item level upgrades being a tougher choice, but some specs are currently passing up 15+ item levels in favor of secondary stats. That shouldn’t be something players are encouraged to do – with the occasional exception on rings and necks, which brings us to our second goal.

    Goal 2: Improve rings and necks. The removal of primary stats from those slots on Legion gear means that your choices of secondary stats there are impactful, which we like. However, they still suffer from the problem of secondary stat distribution dominating the choice of which item to equip. We’ve increased how heavily item level affects the amount of stats on Legion rings and necks in 7.1.5, which will make significant item level jumps a clearer indicator of an upgrade on these slots. You’ll still find situations in which secondary stat choice is more important than item level for rings and necks, which is intentional; we’re just dialing it back a bit.

    Goal 3: Don’t lower player power. This is a key part of the overall strategy that isn’t yet complete. Right now, on the PTR, player power is definitely down a few percent compared to live. The next build will have changes that increase the total amount of stats given by all items above level 800 to account for this gap, such that the overall power of your equipped items should be about the same (if not slightly higher) than it is currently in 7.1.

    As you might expect, these changes will affect some classes more strongly than others. More overall character power will come from your primary stats than it did before, so all of your abilities will hit harder, even if they crit less or happen less frequently. Additionally, as we continue tuning for Patch 7.1.5, we’ll make adjustments as necessary on a spec-by-spec basis.

    Apologies if I'm reading this wrong. But it sounds like the plan is to make us require more of a secondary stat, then provide us a higher value of secondary stats on existing gear. Isn't this counterproductive or am I just derp?
    It's a tough bit of mathematical gymnastics that's tough to explain succinctly, but the long and the short of it is that the way that the item's primary stat (or sheer amount of secondary stats, in the case of rings and necks) make the higher-ilevel piece an upgrade more often.

    I think they need to look into specs that rely on extreme cases of secondary dependence and adjust those specs accordingly. This blanket nerf is going to cause more problems.
    That's what I was getting at in the last paragraph

    Patch 7.1.5 Feedback - Survival Hunter
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    Sorry for the delay in replying to this. Long story short, we agree with the concerns laid out in this thread: Waylay as a damage mechanic isn’t playing well, and the increased trap cooldown is a nerf that undermines other utility upgrades. We’ve been discussing exactly what we want to do about it, and can share some details:

    For starters, the Trap cooldown is going back to a baseline of 30 seconds, just like it is in Patch 7.1. We had initially increased it to 40 based on some concerns that Hunter crowd control might end up too powerful in some situations, but after further consideration, we don’t think that’ll be necessary.

    Regarding Waylay, the original intent of the passive was to reinforce Survival’s niche as trap experts (especially with other Hunter specializations getting traps again) by rewarding clever placement of traps when you’re able to anticipate your enemy’s movement. After all, the very nature of a trap is a hazard set ahead of time for an unsuspecting victim, whereas traps today often end up feeling more like lobbed explosives. However, in group gameplay, the movement of your targets is largely outside of your direct control, and any sort of rotational damage benefit of Waylay is likely to be far more frustrating than fun. We’re going to remove the damage-increasing benefit that Waylay provided to Explosive Trap and let its bonuses focus purely on utility. With the Freezing Trap and Tar Trap cooldown now unchanged, this makes Waylay simply a new utility perk over what Survival has on live, and we’re excited about some of the potential ways Hunters can make use of it in both PvE and PvP.

    As an aside (and this is relevant to all classes and specs), part of our goal to keep patches coming at a steady pace in Legion means that you’re likely to see more half-completed ideas and strange experiments on PTR than even veteran testers might be used to in previous expansions. Just because a change shows up in a PTR build does not mean that it’s something the team views as a final design (or even a design we’re necessarily happy with). This has been especially true with 7.1.5, and we’ve done a poor job of communicating that thus far. We’d like to apologize for that failing, and it’s something we’re actively working to correct.

    PTR Changes and Developer Notes
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    To maybe give a little more hope, we had several meetings and discussions yesterday about ways to improve our internal processes so that we can converse more freely and immediately on in-development changes. Some of those improvements have already been made, and I'm personally hoping the difference will be noticeable over the next few weeks.

    As a guy who works in Dev, the amount of reasons for silence, from "We have no solution and don't want to bring it up without one" to "Policy to not talk about changes until finalized", is sometimes ludicrous.
    We've typically shied toward the former more than we probably need to. Historically we've wanted to be able to say how we're fixing an issue before we say anything, but I think that "we're going to fix this, just haven't decided how yet" is still a good message to get across in the meantime.

    Just a side suggestion: Why not follow the HotS, OW and SC model, and do small explanations with each change in the changelogs? Is it because there are just too many different specs in wow and too many changes for it to be viable?
    That's part of it. We typically do add those explanations for major hotfixes or release notes. Agree that we need more of that for PTR changes.

    BlizzCon Cosplay - Sombra
    Sombra was at BlizzCon this year and this video shows a little bit of the work that went into making the costume.

    Last edited by chaud; 2016-12-02 at 06:54 AM.

  2. #2
    SV will just be underplayed because most people who rolled hunter wanted to play ranged.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    SV will just be underplayed because most people who rolled hunter wanted to play ranged.
    This is about tuning aswell... Survi have been quite bad at beginning of Legion. There is a lot of feral druids and enha shamans :P

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Hemski View Post
    This is about tuning aswell... Survi have been quite bad at beginning of Legion. There is a lot of feral druids and enha shamans :P
    Those specs have existed since Vanilla. Before a few months ago, no one thought to themselves, "Hmmm.......I really like playing melee, maybe I'll play a hunter and one day hope they'll make one spec melee."

    It's about expectation of role and playstyle - people who picked hunter as a playstyle don't really want to play melee.

  5. #5
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    Those specs have existed since Vanilla. Before a few months ago, no one thought to themselves, "Hmmm.......I really like playing melee, maybe I'll play a hunter and one day hope they'll make one spec melee."

    It's about expectation of role and playstyle - people who picked hunter as a playstyle don't really want to play melee.
    Especially now when both the ranged hunter specs feel kind of lackluster - i enjoyed playing Survival during Wotlk, i liked the style.
    I have never tried and I won't ever try the melee hunter spec, I am, as you said, playing hunter to have a ranged char.

    Whats next? Melee Mage or Warlock?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Cranx View Post
    Whats next? Melee Mage or Warlock?
    Spellbreaker would be sweet - sword and shield mana eater..
    Old Demo Warlocks (I think back in Cata? MoP) used to play in mele range and got some mele abilities during Metamorphosis..
    Quote Originally Posted by Archaeon View Post
    In tbc everyone wished they were playing vanilla. In cataclysm everyone will wish they were playing wotlk.
    ^------True story!!

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Cranx View Post
    Whats next? Melee Mage or Warlock?
    Spellbreaker or Spellswords? Yes please

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    SV will just be underplayed because most people who rolled hunter wanted to play ranged.
    /sigh that's so true. I was so hoping to play ranged finally after all these years. Still in pvp SV is probably the only class nobody cried about yet.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Cranx View Post
    Especially now when both the ranged hunter specs feel kind of lackluster - i enjoyed playing Survival during Wotlk, i liked the style.
    I have never tried and I won't ever try the melee hunter spec, I am, as you said, playing hunter to have a ranged char.

    Whats next? Melee Mage or Warlock?
    I actually played my hunter as a melee/trap spec in vanilla (with most talents in Survival); was quite fun, 'though I do get what you mean.

    A tank spec for warlock would have been nice (Demo retuning; and thus semi-melee), but I think Vengeance has replaced that idea almost entirely. Could still work, however — if Blizzard wanted it to, anyway.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by DemoBytom View Post
    Spellbreaker would be sweet - sword and shield mana eater..
    Old Demo Warlocks (I think back in Cata? MoP) used to play in mele range and got some mele abilities during Metamorphosis..

    Yes yes more melee please ... the raids are melee starving!

  11. #11
    As a mage and a mostly m+ player, and semi-retired mythic raider, I'm just becoming more and more disheartened with these changes as I read them. I had already cancelled my sub and was just playing out the month and a half I had left in hopes that the PTR and communication from blizzard just made me feel more at east about the direction the game was taken. As it stands I feel like, rotation wise, my class is going to feel less organic and fun. With the changes on PTR my crit has dropped to the point where I crit less often enough than I can often build fireblast charges without managing them. This makes the class feel like I'm constantly capping resources instead of managing cooldowns and building charges for a purpose (that fat combustion), and spend way too much time casting a filler spell that honestly does almost no substantial damage and therefore doesn't feel good.

    Add in the fact that the ability to deal with random mechanics is being shifted to a single legendary item and the devs are still completely silent on where when and how they are going to fix the RNGesus of legendaries and how not fun, punishing, and spec limiting the items are. Volcanic is going to feel insanely punishing as range, to the point where I wouldn't want to play more than my weekly 12 those weeks, unless I somehow gets those boots. I can't switch to frost or arcane because all my DPS legendaries (Bracers, which I was insanely lucky to get and Belt) are for the fire spec. Even if I switch there are like four I could get for any spec, and only 1 of those I actually want, and 1 I feel like I have to have despite not really wanting to use it in favor of others.

    Blizzard could have simply fixed fire mage by making Critical Mass give crit scaling on intellect vs the current flat crit (as it was long ago compared to now) instead of all these gymnastics they are doing to make certain secondaries (crit for mages) less important. I understand the damage buff that happened, but even after that fire mages have lost about 25% single target DPS (I've currently dropped 100k DPS at ilvl 876).

    I know PTR isn't over yet and there will be more changes, but I really don't like the direction things are going, I don't feel like the real problems players have with the game as it is are being addresses, and I don't think the changes that are being made amount to me having more fun. I have faith things might turn around for the better, but as it stands when my sub expires in about four weeks that is going to be it for me. I don't like these big changes being made with a total lack of communication, and I don't like how tight lipped they are about legendaries and how they are affecting the game given how obviously important they are.

  12. #12
    a real hunter can only choose 2 specs..

    blizzard no hunter want this melee spec!

    hunter class design in legion are one of the greatest fail in wow!

    but the hunters have learned to survive.. you stole us so much over the time..
    Last edited by Arvandor; 2016-12-02 at 12:08 PM.

  13. #13
    Yo,
    What about trinkets? That is the real question!!

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Arvandor View Post
    a real hunter can only choose 2 specs..

    blizzard no hunter want this melee spec!

    hunter class design in legion are one of the greatest fail in wow!

    but the hunters have learned to survive.. you stole us so much over the time..
    Yeah you're alone poor lonesome cowboy... enlarge your mind, play paladin from the vanilla start, play <insert_class>, you'll get cured.

  15. #15
    Mage and hunter tears... delicious

  16. #16
    I love my SV. I rolled one to learn it and loved it. And with MM dead to me, I'm really liking still having a hunter to play. And I've barely touched my BM hunter, only for that free level that the 12th anniversary gave us all.

  17. #17
    I don't get why they fumble around with the stats so much. Best choice would've been to just activate reforge again - the code is still there, the NPC's too.
    This way you could change a +10 ilvl item with bad stats to a +10 ilvl item with better stats that improves your char over the old item.

    The real overhaul like less power from secondary stats would come with a new xpac - makes more sense IMHO...
    If you do different numbers now and they have to rebalance the stats again and again because of it, it would suck. Maybe you can't even balance them like they should be.

  18. #18
    It was a dumb idea to make Survival melee. They added yet another melee class to the game, and then what do they do? Removed a ranged spec to turn it into melee. They have yet to add a ranged DPS class since this game came out, but they've added plenty of melee. Would be nice to see that changed.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maerad View Post
    I don't get why they fumble around with the stats so much. Best choice would've been to just activate reforge again - the code is still there, the NPC's too.
    This way you could change a +10 ilvl item with bad stats to a +10 ilvl item with better stats that improves your char over the old item.
    Because they don't like what reforging as a design choice became.

    Personally I don't think reforging ever was that great. Good thing they got rid of it and I hope it's not coming back.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    SV will just be underplayed because most people who rolled hunter wanted to play ranged.
    That and they added a new melee class the same expansion they decided to make one of the specs of one of the 3 purely ranged classes melee. Legion is melee overkill.

    Seriously, many many many many things in legion so far; while it's a fun expansion..to a point; it feels like they just had ideas and shoved them in with no forethought or fleshing out. Like the devs hands were forced by stock holders or investors who were gun-shy of another subscription loss so just shovel out content and fix it later.

    I mean christ they can't even release a cosmetic pet for charity with out cocking it up.

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