Build 44895 Models, Aug 2 Hotfixes, Dragonflight - Shaman Changes, Blue Posts

[chaud]

Dragonflight Alpha - Build 44895 Models
Dragonflight Alpha Build 44895 added a couple new models.

Patch 9.2.5 Hotfixes - August 2, 2022

Covenants

• Kyrian
  
  • Fixed an issue that allowed Effusive Anima Accelerator's (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos Soulbind) explosion to strike enemies that were not within line of sight of its point of impact, causing players to unintentionally engage enemies through floors and walls.
    

Dungeons and Raids

• Fated Raids
  
  • Fated Castle Nathria
    
    • Fixed an issue where Raid Finder difficulty was erroneously granting enemies less stats than intended.
      
  • Fated Powers
    
    • Reconfiguration Emitter now shows an additional visual effect while immune to damage before the first interrupt to improve its clarity.
      
• Mythic+
  
  • Operation: Mechagon - Workshop
    
    • King Mechagon
      
      • Magneto-Arm now scales with the Tyrannical affix instead of the Fortified affix.
        

Items and Rewards

• Fixed an issue where Mountebank's Colorful Cloak dropped at the incorrect item level.

Player versus Player

• The Hyperthread Wristwraps effect has been disabled in Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas.

Quests

• [NA Realms] Fixed an issue preventing players from receiving credit towards the quest “Crossing Fate.”
  
  • Developers’ note: We’re working on a fix that will accurately reflect the progress that was made for those affected by the bug. We’ll update the Hotfixes once that fix has been deployed.
    

Dragonflight Alpha - Shaman Changes

Hello again, Shamans!

In today’s new build of the Dragonflight Alpha, we have several adjustments to talents in the Shaman Class Tree intended to reduce the overall defensive and mobility kit of Shaman, which has crept up due to the new system allowing for previously impossible combinations. We’re happy with new talent combinations, but the mobility and defensive power in the tree exceeded our target for Shaman, and individual talent power was above budget compared to other classes.

Elemental
We’ve continued to make minor tweaks to the Elemental tree, based on feedback. This week we focused on improvements to Primordial Wave. It’s generally avoided outside of AoE in the current design, so our aim is to improve its overall value in various game modes to increase build diversity.

We attempted to address node pathing pain points for Storm Elemental with Primal Elementalist. There is now a path available towards Primal Elementalist that doesn’t require sinking more than a couple points into talents unrelated to a Lightning-focused build.

Electrified Shocks is an experiment we’re excited about for Icefury in AoE, and we’re continuing to make adjustments to it. We’ve increased the duration of the Icefury buff which should be an overall improvement to its gameplay given the window was previously hard to fit your Frost Shocks in. We’ve also reduced the number of targets hit and increased the duration of the debuff on enemies, as the intent is for there to be weaving gameplay between Chain Lightning and Frost Shock.

Flames of the Firelord is a niche talent, mainly used for PvP or some AoE builds and we felt it best to combine its functionality with Flames of the Cauldron.
Magma Chamber has moved as its generally more versatile than Searing Flames. Its damage bonus has also been increased.
Talent changes for Elemental:

• Flames of the Firelord has been removed, and its effect is now attached to Flames of the Cauldron.
• Flames of the Cauldron now reduces the cooldown of Flame Shock by 1.5 seconds and Flame Shock deals damage 15% faster.
• Icefury buff duration increased to 25 seconds (was 15 seconds).
• Electrified Shocks makes Frost Shock hit 3 additional targets (was 4), and the debuff duration increased to 6 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Magma Chamber Damage bonus increased to 0.7%/1.5% per stack (was 0.5%/1.0% per stack).
• Tumbling Waves has been removed from Elemental and replaced with Rolling Magma.
• Rolling Magma causes Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage to reduce the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.5/1.0 seconds.
• Splintered Elements increases Haste by 10% per stack (was 6%).
• Fire Elemental once again increases the duration of Flame Shock by 100% while active.
• Coming soon:
  
  • Heat Wave - Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.

Restoration
We also made some adjustments to the Restoration tree to improve accessibility to damage/utility focused talents without needing to talent into throughput.

We’ve swapped Resurgence and Lava Surge to allow for damage-focused builds to not require talenting into increased mana regeneration.

Thanks again for your testing and feedback!

Blue Posts

The Winds of Wisdom Buff and Timing
Thank you for this feedback. We selected the timing of this buff to specifically benefit players who were preparing for Season 4.

We’re always thinking about when might be the right time to do an XP buff again in the future, and we do not have any immediate plans to announce at this time, but we’ll take this feedback into account when considering future leveling bonus events. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Season 4 Class Tuning
Thank you for the post. We understand your frustration and want to take this opportunity to explain why there won’t be any changes to address the issue in Shadowlands. First, we largely view this as a preferred playstyle issue and not a balance one. Upon reviewing balance across all content formats, we didn’t see any reason to make changes to Havoc specifically. Second, the primary issue that we’re hearing is that some players do not enjoy the playstyle of maintaining Sinful Brand uptime through Eye Beam. We don’t think this point of the expansion is the appropriate time to disrupt players that have made significant investment into playing Havoc this way. However, we acknowledge the feedback you’re giving and we’ll be sure not to bring this particular gameplay forward into Dragonflight. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

[Magistrate]

Guess they fixed hogger lol

[Stickiler]

Guess they fixed hogger lol

Hogger always used a generic gnoll model, it's nice that they're acknowledging the meme status he's achieved and are giving him his own model.

[Lynnaroo]

Now that’s a proper gnoll

[Ihavewaffles]

omfg, bring back the xp buff! I have tons of alts to level !

[Fullmetal89]

Why the fuck did they remove the XP buff? I swear being a customer of this fucking company is like being a battered housewife. They start doing great for months then knock you fucking teeth out for no reason.

[Chickat]

Great, now I want to play as a knoll.

[Ezzet]

Why the fuck did they remove the XP buff? I swear being a customer of this fucking company is like being a battered housewife. They start doing great for months then knock you fucking teeth out for no reason.

Because people like you don't read what it was for. It was PREP for season 4.. Just wait for DF pre patch, they have more or less removed 60% of the xp required between 1-60.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I can’t believe after all complaints they actually fixed Hogger. Ahahhaha

[Heavens Night]

Because people like you don't read what it was for. It was PREP for season 4.. Just wait for DF pre patch, they have more or less removed 60% of the xp required between 1-60.

I'm sorry, but I don't give a fuck about "season4" Whatever the fuck that means. I just wanted to level alts and I will now not be doing that, because without this buff I'm not putting myself through the fucking mindnumbing shitfest that is Shadowlands, again.

[Arkura]

Because people like you don't read what it was for. It was PREP for season 4.. Just wait for DF pre patch, they have more or less removed 60% of the xp required between 1-60.

Indeed. Pre patch is the ultimate catchup/lvling patch. Just wait a month or two and you can level in no time

[Asrialol]

I'm sorry, but I don't give a fuck about "season4" Whatever the fuck that means. I just wanted to level alts and I will now not be doing that, because without this buff I'm not putting myself through the fucking mindnumbing shitfest that is Shadowlands, again.

Imagine being this mad because of your own ignorance.

[Bwgmon]

I can’t believe after all complaints they actually fixed Hogger. Ahahhaha

I think it's a bit bold to assume they "fixed" it due to complaints and not that the previous one was a placeholder.

If this was a response to the feedback, they must've managed to get it through the pipeline in record time.

[Ezzet]

I'm sorry, but I don't give a fuck about "season4" Whatever the fuck that means. I just wanted to level alts and I will now not be doing that, because without this buff I'm not putting myself through the fucking mindnumbing shitfest that is Shadowlands, again.

The buff was for season 4 prep, doesn't matter if you care about season 4 or not. The entitlement is massive here.

[Futch]

I think it's a bit bold to assume they "fixed" it due to complaints and not that the previous one was a placeholder.

If this was a response to the feedback, they must've managed to get it through the pipeline in record time.

I'm with you. I think the older model was a placeholder.

[OokOok]

I think it's a bit bold to assume they "fixed" it due to complaints and not that the previous one was a placeholder.

If this was a response to the feedback, they must've managed to get it through the pipeline in record time.

Record time? considering the hogger outrage happened over a month ago how long do you think it takes for someone to design a couple pieces of clothing and armor? If your answer is anything longer than a day well....low iq

[Heavens Night]

The buff was for season 4 prep, doesn't matter if you care about season 4 or not. The entitlement is massive here.

No I'm just annoyed, actually. But you do you.

[Alkizon]

Hogger stuff

It's funny, of course, but no, I'm not impressed, whatever one may say, but nothing in common, just another "modern" generated toy (if look at it essentially, then 2nd "new" model didn't really make any significant to correct 1st "new", just some little adjustments abot which I talked in previous post, although armor is low poly and idk why this~such shoulderpad there). Same silly, as I mentioned pointing to corpes of "supposedly tortured" on walls' spikes, even when we discussed changing in game's story/art style in general

However, result itself is very expected, because through all this disgrace same "new" one and the same style traces, people who seriously work with different authors' fake paintings are well versed in such things-styles, and here you don’t even need to be expert to point finger for mismatch. (btw, recent "first version" went even beyond their distorted thinking and new one just perfectly fits into one)

This is correct model, adequate, consistent with old one. And this... more like just some Crash Bandicoot. Whatever one may say, this is a different model, they have nothing in common, except for game location, however, 95% of new-replacing models completely fit into this very definition since time of end of MoP and beyond.
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Also, they still don't know how to draw fur/hair properly/naturally, that's why humans never will have long beards (2nd and main reason, of course, is that humans have too long necks for such transition), even new dwarves' ones (those long and voluminous) looks terrible. Implementation was in one texture in old models, which was a solid texture from face to belly, and ends didn't merge with body textures, they lay on top, not to mention drawing/mosaic itself. All "after change" beards in one way or another resemble solid plastic blotch in model, not hair. Some less, some more, but diagnosis is same everywhere. If you look closely, they didn’t even deal right with color and shade/light change directions, it goes across waves for old models, which emphasizes and is explained by relief, and for mostly new ones - along, what else can we talk about. Same with fur picture, bold unnatural lines not related directly to depicted "object", looks like just as in an attempt to emphasize unnaturalness/artificiality thereof, and plastic tufts-pieces sickly sticking out of model.

Strange as it may seem, but aforementioned model from HotS is doing quite well with that problem
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ps. They are just walking caricatures of what should really be. Wasted.

[Skirdus]

I do appreciate when Blizz actually listens to the community's gripes. New Hogger model is a much-needed improvement

[Kralljin]

Great, now give every Gnoll a similiar model.