BfA Patch Speculation thread (8.3 and later).

[Fahrad Wagner]

Can't wait to explore Nazjatar! It looks promising!

[Directionalk9]

Im guessing Heritage armors is where all the effort went for sets this expansion

And the Battle of Azar’alaor sets...

[Baracuda]

Does anyone know how to get to Mechagon?

[Sondrelk]

Does anyone know how to get to Mechagon?

Go to the PTR and do the quest that opens Mechagon. It is next to the flight master in boralus if you are Alliance. The Flight path is not made yet so if you have done the questline and want to return you need to talk to Dread Captain Placeholder

[George Costanza]

The PTR build today is most likely coming in 36 hours or so, coz it tends to come out when i have important IRL stuff going on (in this case I have an exam in 47 hours, and watching Endgame in 56 hours. so somewhere between those 36-59 hours is where i see it coming. alternatively it is later this week

[infinitemeridian]

Hopefully we get Nazjatar this week.

[rda]

To be honest, guys, unless someone hits them with a bat on the forums and they do something with HoA essences or at least say that they are going to do it - in the next one-two weeks - it's going to be pretty bad. I am on my last breath playing the incomplete spec of my current main (guardian), and I get reminded all the time how good compared to BFA even Legion legendaries were (which I thought at the time were fair, but not super-cool, just the usual fair, more or less on the level of tier bonuses + expansion cloak or ring). I want to opt for burst and I don't have it, I want to opt for super-AOE for farming along the lines of Luffa (increased AOE range / damage) and I don't have it, etc. It's a long-long-long string of what I don't have and so far with what's coming in 8.2 it seems I'll just continue to not have it.

[Alga]

Also I might risk to say, Blizzard don't intend in the slightest to deal the Class Design "Problem" with this HoA stuff. It's their take on the Azerite Problem and nothting more, nothing less.

And for my part.. I like playing Arcane or Frost. I leveled a KT Rogue, Druids and a Gnome Priest. All felt different to play, so I may also not get the Class Balance Problem.

[rda]

I honestly don't see how you expect essences to save class design. The only option would be to just add tons of "minor" essences that are only passives and change progression. The issue is that this would be equivalent to redesigning half the specs in the game if not more.

I said before that I'd be fine with Legion legendaries / artifact ability returning as essences (with no other essences added), but someone pointed out that they redesigned a couple of specs so for those specs at least Blizzard would have to do new analogs, plus maybe there are other complications. All in all, maybe that's hard, I agree. But they did have a lot of time (at least 4 months now, counting from the release of 8.1) and when I look at HoA I just can't help thinking that they spent at most 1 month on that, it's just so bland and uncreative and unpolished. Like, why? You know that's where the main problem is, don't you (addressing Blizzard)?

And most of all, suppose I accept that OK, that all is too hard to do, BFA is screwed in that way. OK. What's next? My spec is still hosed. It's pretty terrible. I am not saying that I am going to sit here and whine for the rest of the expansion - I won't - but the end result seems to be so far: 8.2 is not fixing it for folks like me whose main problem is simply the gameplay deteriorating into being unfun.

[FlubberPuddy]

Also I might risk to say, Blizzard don't intend in the slightest to deal the Class Design "Problem" with this HoA stuff. It's their take on the Azerite Problem and nothting more, nothing less.

And for my part.. I like playing Arcane or Frost. I leveled a KT Rogue, Druids and a Gnome Priest. All felt different to play, so I may also not get the Class Balance Problem.

This is pretty much it, essences are to fix the problem with Azerite, not class design. Class design itself is also very subjective, one person may like how a spec/class plays now vs those that enjoyed the previous iteration.

Just like class balance, class design is going to get changes most drastically between expansions, not within them (unless something is in absolute dire need objectively - not subjectively).

For instance I looooove how Rogue plays nowadays compared to the old designs and I'm typically a fan of assassin/thief/rogue archetypes.

[rda]

Also I might risk to say, Blizzard don't intend in the slightest to deal the Class Design "Problem" with this HoA stuff. It's their take on the Azerite Problem and nothting more, nothing less.

What's the difference between azerite problem and class design problem? I thought they were the same thing. Do you mean not re-earning the same powers? That's a little small.

That's mostly theoretical, granted, but if you ask people what they expected from "azerite rework in 8.2" I don't think many would say that they just wanted a couple of things, I think the expectations were that they will actually work on classes - not only fix issues like the one mentioned, but actually provide better = more interesting and useful azerite traits.

[rda]

Imo the solution that CAN be implemented on the short term would be for the world mobs added in 8.2 and perhaps later on to be more complex. And by that I don't mean have more health but rather have mechanics that if you ignore, you are FUCKED (and well, have enough health that the survive to use those mechanics at least once).

We kinda had that on Timeless Isle - ignore the main cast of a Kilnmaster or respond too slowly and you are near-dead, same for other mobs.

I don't know if this would fix much. I mean, yeah, that's perhaps somewhat more fun than mobs that do nothing, but I am feeling bad about my spec not because the mobs are dumb, but rather because the spec is dumb. When the spec is good, I don't care much about mobs being dumb because I can create difficulty by pulling more / soloing heroics and mythics / soloing extreme things in old raids, etc. And how smart can you make the mobs before this starts being annoying? After you beat the smart mob the first twenty times, with every next time you increasingly start looking at this as "yeah, yeah, fine, I have to spend a minute killing you and have to keep interrupt your cast which makes you immune for 30 sec" and this just gets annoying.

Anyway. I can feel the focus of my attention shifting from 8.2 (which perhaps won't do much to specs) to 9.0. And I am kind of fearing of what it's going to be in 9.0. I mean, a lot of people yelled at them to fix specs and 8.2... apparently not enough time or whatever. So, who's going to say that they will make things better in 9.0?

[FlubberPuddy]

That's mostly theoretical, granted, but if you ask people what they expected from "azerite rework in 8.2" I don't think many would say that they just wanted a couple of things, I think the expectations were that they will actually work on classes - not only fix issues like the one mentioned, but actually provide better = more interesting and useful azerite traits.

Azerite rework was never about the classes themselves. In Legion, our artifacts and their specific traits were connected to our classes intentionally aka class design tied to Artifacts. You were expected to be an Arcane mage that eventually and always had access to Rule of Threes trait for example.

In BFA, the Azerite traits are not tied to class design. What this means is there aren't any traits you're expected to always have as an Arcane Mage, or Destro Lock, etc. That was a Legion class design and in BFA they moved away from it which is why some integral Artifact features either became baseline or a talent tree.

It is entirely a player's own fault for thinking Azerite traits is meant to replace Legion Artifacts. Azerite traits were to act as pseudo-Legion Leggos but much less powerful.

Now I'm not going to say they don't have work to do on a class design perspective, but that's not something that was tied to Azerite traits at all. Also we know that Blizzard is adverse to making class design changes like they do between expansions, during an expansion. So expecting that is pretty nonsensical.

[rda]

^^ Somewhere in that line of giving challenges should be a BFA version of the mage tower - it really was a great feature in Legion. My biggest issue with it was that it wasn't balanced evenly, but in retrospect I'd take that, it's still good. Maybe in 8.3...

[infinitemeridian]

^^ Somewhere in that line of giving challenges should be a BFA version of the mage tower - it really was a great feature in Legion. My biggest issue with it was that it wasn't balanced evenly, but in retrospect I'd take that, it's still good. Maybe in 8.3...

I would love a Mage Tower 2.0 as well. As someone who only raids intermittently and doesn't really do M+, it's nice to have challenging content to strive for. Gave me a reason to level alts too.

[Sondrelk]

I am not sure.
Mage Tower was awesome in Legion, yes. But it was awesome because you had a reason to do it with 36 specs and that meant getting legendaries and gearing 12 characters. You also had many other reason to do that; seeing the artifact acquisition and class campaign quests, getting the class mounts, having as many alts as possible for gold farming through the mission table. None of this is true in BfA. I am unsure that many people have bothered leveling multiple alts because there is far less of a reason to do so. Also Mage Tower worked because it was released in 7.2 and thus you had a lot of time to gear up and manage it. If Mage Tower had been released and tuned for 7.3, a far smaller number of people would have been able to complete it.

I can somewhat confirm this. At the end of Legion i ended up doing all the DPS and Tank challenges. But looking back, i think it was less because Mage towers were inherently fun and more from a obsessive collector standpoint, both from limited time items to having one of each class.

I think you are definitely right in that if Mage tower came out in 7.3 it could not be as popular, and especially not as highly regarded now.
Much of the rose-tinted glasses from mage towers come, i think, from the fact that by the end of Legion, doing most of the DPS and Tank challenges were trivial, gearing up an alt was very low effort, and overall the reward to effort i believe was far more heavily skewed towards rewards than people consider now.

I do want another mage tower-esque challenge again, but what i definitely do not want is a half-assed one. Not in rewards, and definitely not content, like i am sure we would have gotten if Blizz decided to go all-in on a system like it for BfA.

[Dracullus]

I am not sure.
Mage Tower was awesome in Legion, yes. But it was awesome because you had a reason to do it with 36 specs and that meant getting legendaries and gearing 12 characters. You also had many other reason to do that; seeing the artifact acquisition and class campaign quests, getting the class mounts, having as many alts as possible for gold farming through the mission table. None of this is true in BfA. I am unsure that many people have bothered leveling multiple alts because there is far less of a reason to do so. Also Mage Tower worked because it was released in 7.2 and thus you had a lot of time to gear up and manage it. If Mage Tower had been released and tuned for 7.3, a far smaller number of people would have been able to complete it.

If 8.3 Mage Tower would be up 24/7 we would have way more time to do it than in Legion. And special rewards would MAKE reason to level raids + there are usual stuff, before Legion expansions didn't have many class content and people leveled alts anyway.

About difficulty, they can just nerf them a little in 8.3.5. + BfA shower people with high gear with stuff like warfronts,

Btw, sometimes I feel that part of BfA content is crafted for me - I have 1 character from all races + 1DK + 1DH for years (so 15 chars in Legion, 23 right now). Now it finally pay off with Horde/Alliance unique content and heritage questlines for specific races.

[Greyfang]

I can somewhat confirm this. At the end of Legion i ended up doing all the DPS and Tank challenges. But looking back, i think it was less because Mage towers were inherently fun and more from a obsessive collector standpoint, both from limited time items to having one of each class.

I think you are definitely right in that if Mage tower came out in 7.3 it could not be as popular, and especially not as highly regarded now.
Much of the rose-tinted glasses from mage towers come, i think, from the fact that by the end of Legion, doing most of the DPS and Tank challenges were trivial, gearing up an alt was very low effort, and overall the reward to effort i believe was far more heavily skewed towards rewards than people consider now.

I do want another mage tower-esque challenge again, but what i definitely do not want is a half-assed one. Not in rewards, and definitely not content, like i am sure we would have gotten if Blizz decided to go all-in on a system like it for BfA.

I'm of the idea that a BFA "Mage Tower" could be focused in race instead of class/spec (the theme fits better), and could involve getting Racial Weapons. We already have Warfront Armors and Heritage Sets being built around races, so racial weapons would complement that well.

[Sondrelk]

I'm of the idea that a BFA "Mage Tower" could be focused in race instead of class/spec (the theme fits better), and could involve getting Racial Weapons. We already have Warfront Armors and Heritage Sets being built around races, so racial weapons would complement that well.

While i don't disagree that racial weapons are a cool idea, the have and have-nots of the racial weapons are in fact, quite severe.

Firstly, each spec would, for it to be fair, be able to get a weapon they could use. Me playing a MM hunter for instance would hav to get at least 1 ranged weapon and 1 polearm for Survival spec.
I also play Human, which, while certainly overrepresented is not one of the few lucky ones with a plethora of cool unused weapon models to draw upon. The only weapon i can think of, off the top of my head is Shalamayne, which regardless of the fact that us getting it would be a lore nightmare, is also a sword, and therefore no use to a large chunk of the human classes.

All in all, while it is easy to just consider the cool weapons like the Blood elf guard glaive and shield, or the DI dwarf drill mace/staff. You still have to consider the amount of effort having to be put in to create the minimum amount of weapons needed for the rewards to be fair.

And this is kinda the point i was making with not wanting Blizz to rush it, i would rather they sit on the knowledge that Mage tower was a success while considering appropriate content with appropriate rewards that do not feel like an intern made them over the weekend.


Edit: While i do not want to give the impression i think the idea of rewarding race-themed weapons is dumb, i do want you to consider the sheer amount of weapons needed to satisfy every race/class combo in the game.

[Chickat]

I said before that I'd be fine with Legion legendaries / artifact ability returning as essences (with no other essences added), but someone pointed out that they redesigned a couple of specs so for those specs at least Blizzard would have to do new analogs, plus maybe there are other complications. All in all, maybe that's hard, I agree. But they did have a lot of time (at least 4 months now, counting from the release of 8.1) and when I look at HoA I just can't help thinking that they spent at most 1 month on that, it's just so bland and uncreative and unpolished. Like, why? You know that's where the main problem is, don't you (addressing Blizzard)?

And most of all, suppose I accept that OK, that all is too hard to do, BFA is screwed in that way. OK. What's next? My spec is still hosed. It's pretty terrible. I am not saying that I am going to sit here and whine for the rest of the expansion - I won't - but the end result seems to be so far: 8.2 is not fixing it for folks like me whose main problem is simply the gameplay deteriorating into being unfun.

Tbh I'm positive 9.0 is going to be a Renaissance period for class design. With all the bitching about it in 8.0, they have no choice. I want them to start adding abilities again. They even said that they wanted to start adding fun stuff and worry about the untidy consequences later.