Marksmanship PTR Changes, Chain Heal PTR Changes, Blue Posts, FinalBossTV Mythic+

[chaud]

Patch 8.1.0 PTR - VO, Diablo at BlizzCon 2018

Blood Elf Heritage Armor and Heritage of the Sin'dorei Quest Chain

Patch 8.1.0 PTR - Build 28151

Patch 8.1 - Marksmanship PTR Changes

The Public Test Realms (PTR) are seeing several changes for Marksmanship Hunters. Here’s some context on those changes.

One goal of ours for Marksmanship is proficiency in keeping targets at range in PvE and PvP situations. Marksmanship plays best when you have distance from your target, so we’re emphasizing some of the tools that help you either move a target away from you, or keep your distance.

• Bursting Shot has had its knockback range increased, can no longer be dodged, and snares targets for 6 seconds now.

• Steady Shot will now increase the duration of Concussive Shot on the target by 3 seconds. This will work on a Concussive Shot from any friendly Hunter, not just your own Concussive Shot.

Rapid Fire has had some usability problems in PvP. Most other channeled spells will continue to deal damage when your target runs behind a pillar and breaks line of sight, but Rapid Fire requires constant line of sight. We’re changing that, and now it will behave like almost every other channeled spell that players cast, and will continue to damage a target, even if the target is no longer in line of sight. We also think it’s cool to be able to use Disengage while channeling Rapid Fire, so now you can.

Aimed Shot is a driving force behind a significant amount of the damage a Marksmanship Hunter deals. There are a lot of different stacking bonuses you can get from various Talents and Azerite Armor that can swing the damage of Aimed Shot by a huge amount. Some of these bonuses are entirely uncontrolled, which made Aimed Shot an unreliable source of damage. We want Aimed Shot to feel like an impactful and more reliable source of damage, so:

• Careful Aim is now a guaranteed bonus to Aimed Shot damage against targets above 80% health or below 20% health.

Trueshot has changed a lot over the years, but it’s currently not a very exciting button, and it could feel much more impactful when you use it. We like that it makes your Aimed Shot cast time reduced, so we’re keeping that, and it now additionally causes your Rapid Fire and Aimed Shot abilities to recharge significantly faster while Trueshot is active. The new version of Trueshot is a significant pacing change for its duration, allowing you to cast multiple Aimed Shots and Rapid Fires during its duration. We’re also lowering its cooldown from 3 minutes to 2 minutes.

Patch 8.1 - Chain Heal PTR Changes

The changes to Resto Shaman in the PTR is CHAIN HEAL CENTRIC.

• Chain Heal Heals the friendly target for [ 105% [ 140% of Spell Power ], then jumps to heal the most injured nearby party or raid members. Healing is reduced by 15% after each jump. Heals 3 total targets then jumps to 2 most injured nearby allies. Healing is reduced by 30% with each jump. Shaman - Restoration Spec. Shaman - Restoration Spec. 25% of Base Mana. 40 yd range. 2.5 sec cast.
• High Tide Chain Heal bounces to 1 additional targets, and its falloff with each bounce is reduced by half Every 0 mana you spend brings a High Tide, making your next 2 Chain Heals heal for an additional 20% and not reduce with each jump. Restoration Shaman - Level 100 Talent. Restoration Shaman - Level 100 Talent.1% of Base Mana.

Just to avoid any confusion that may be occurring due to tooltips on PTR:

• Chain Heal's base functionality is unchanged, other than receiving a large healing increase (roughly speaking, baking in most of the value of the previous High Tide).
• High Tide is redesigned, but is still a passive--the mana cost in the tooltip header is an error.

Brief context: as a passive buff to every Chain Heal, High Tide was putting it in an awkward position where the base skill wasn't very prominent in the toolkit if you used other talents. The goal here is to both put Chain Heal back on the map while using Ascendance or Wellspring in any type of content, and also provide a talent option which allows for strong moments centered around very large Chain Heals.

Usual PTR disclaimers: still under iteration, open to feedback, not necessarily tuned.

Blue Posts

BlizzCon Q&A
I havent watched the wow panel the last year because I was not playing much wow and didn't originally plan to come back (but the free weekend in June roped me in)

Anyway, usually they open to questions from the audience, do you think they will legit answer questions or beat around the bush more and give no real solid reply?

I don't play the classes or specs that are having issues but its so noticable the issues that marks hunters have and shadow priests. I know balancing so many classes has to be hard but come on now.
It's questions that attendees and submit via a box on Day 1, along with a post that we will put up on the forums where you guys can ask questions. Same as last year.

As for the curation, yes we obviously have to dig through and filter questions because we do have a limited time and we want to get to some relevant questions based on what we're talking about and the things that we know are up and coming. If you're watching that Q&A and expecting a mechanical deep dive of questions then you're going to be disappointed as those are just not easily answered on the spot like that in a live Q&A. I would recommend looking up a video of it from previous years in case you're curious.

I hope the duck guy finally returns and we find out the fishing lure wasn't good enough for him. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

FinalBossTV #170 - State of Mythic+ in Battle for Azeroth
Bay sits down w/Sjeletyven, Cirra & Revofevi to talk about all the positives and negatives of Mythic+ Dungeons in the Battle for Azeroth.

[Fluppington]

Exciting changes for Marksmanship hunters. Not sure if it's going to be enough to drag them out of the dirt entirely though

[Debased]

I like how the 2nd blue post just flat out ignored the last bit about mm and shadow. It looks like mm got some changes, that's cool, but I know nothing of the spec.

Shadow is completely fucked though. Apparently 100% of their pitiful efforts are focused on shaman.

[Ophenia]

Rapid Fire has had some usability problems in PvP. Most other channeled spells will continue to deal damage when your target runs behind a pillar and breaks line of sight, but Rapid Fire requires constant line of sight. We’re changing that, and now it will behave like almost every other channeled spell that players cast, and will continue to damage a target, even if the target is no longer in line of sight.

I can get the reason behind, but that doesn't make sense. On the contrary, all the channeled spells requiring line of sight should stop as soon as the target hides.

But they're definitely lazy, instead of fixing all the nonsense channels to be normal, they changed the normally-functioning one.

[Deleted]

Just started playing Marksmanship, and the changes this build are awesome. I've wanted to disengage while channeling, and now I can!

[Gasparde]

I can get the reason behind, but that doesn't make sense. On the contrary, all the channeled spells requiring line of sight should stop as soon as the target hides.

But they're definitely lazy, instead of fixing all the nonsense channels to be normal, they changed the normally-functioning one.

As is tradition.
Just like how they prefer to nerf the only 2 tank specs that feel decent to play instead of buffing the absolute trash specs to a reasonable level.

[Jasper Kazai]

Asking the people who always field softball questions but pretend they don't if they're going to continue to field softball questions is not a very useful endeavor.

[Drejjmit]

Disengage should not cancel anything. Mages can Blink mid cast. Why can't we Disengage mid cast?

[ElDoorO]

As is tradition.
Just like how they prefer to nerf the only 2 tank specs that feel decent to play instead of buffing the absolute trash specs to a reasonable level.

Wait, did you say they were going to nerf them? In what ways? I haven't seen them announce changes yet.

[Stormykitten]

Imagine if blizz started doing that for all the classes, and prioritized fun over...whatever they're prioritizing now.

Yes, it's been my issue with class design for a long time now. In part, it is because they now balance entirely around the very high end 1% gameplay, and sacrifice everything else for it. Another part is that now the fun has been relegated to the pvp side as well, where they feel more relaxed and you can directly see how much better the pvp talents are than pve ones on average (aside from the medallion etc), just because they work with less restrictions.

I honestly dunno if they just have to abandon the world first races/MDI to get good class design or if you can combine it, I just know I am so sad at what is going on.

[WhiteUsedSocks]

Still waiting for Shadow priest changes...

[Deleted]

Sounds like MM is gonna be fun to play against as a melee.

[Deleted]

Still waiting for Shadow priest changes...

Agreed... *watches the tumbleweed roll by*

[ONCHEhap]

As is tradition.
Just like how they prefer to nerf the only 2 tank specs that feel decent to play instead of buffing the absolute trash specs to a reasonable level.

and for blood,the nerf doesn't even make sense
Blood is OP for m+ and decent in raids

So they took any form of raid viability blood has behind the shed and put it down,while letting them be OP in m+

- - - Updated - - -

Wait, did you say they were going to nerf them? In what ways? I haven't seen them announce changes yet.

Monk is about to get stagger nerfed,blood got a 15% armor nerf (absolutely ridiculously huge nerf) and a 5% nerf to both reduction and threshold on Will of the Necropolis

[KajiSagara]

ok i will leave my opinion about the MM hunter, feel free to be offended (you will any way), the MM hunter is mostly sh$%, aimed shot is not a useful source of dps on pvp or pve because the slow, cast, the not able to move and is only useful in pvp then you are ignored, line of sight? is a general problem with everything in the hunter, have tried yo see the gameplay of a mage or ranged shaman vs a hunter? it's like watching a world tournament vs seeing paint drying on a wall, slow boring and unengaged, the MM hunter in legion was slow but not that slow and the lose of stats of bfa makes the issue worse, the hunter is an example of how many systems have to replace the azerite system but the hole is way to big to fill, the new true shot is a band on a fracture, that doesn't resolves any problems with the speed of the gameplay vs other classes, dead blizzard hunters are not fun, it was a "meh" in legion now is a "oh god no", please go and reffer to the most fun hunters of other expansions to me, WOTLK, cata, pandaria).

[javierdsv]

Still waiting for Shadow priest changes...

They will announce them during the final PTR phase, this way they make sure all the feedback will be disregarded as they "cannot fix it until next patch".

[athrun7189]

Still waiting for Shadow priest changes...

same here! its fun and OK in heroic but i'm realy starting to feel bad in mythic
even with good parses i'm always bottom lol

[Morg]

So there going to filter any questions that make them look bad and just answer the brown nosing ass kissers who think they can do no wrong... Great value

[huldu]

They nerf something by a large amount then "buff" it slightly after a week or two just to appear like "we're the good guys and we understand", the end result is a NERF not a buff. They do this *all* the time. It's very typical blizzard.

[darklogrus]

Still waiting for Shadow priest changes...

Should have been the first second and third posts in relations to class tweaking...