Datamined Affix Chances For Enchanting, Rend Hotfix Now Live, [Stats] 5 Hours of Cursed Chests Farming
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Skin Spotlight: Medic Uther, Into The Nexus #9Warlords of Draenor - Shaman Tier 17 Armor Sets
The latest alpha build added the Mythic version of the Shaman Tier 17 Armor set.
Warlords of Draenor changes things up slightly by using one set of art for Raid Finder, one set of art for Normal and Heroic, and one set of art for Mythic difficulty. You can find the Raid Finder armor sets in our Raid Finder armor sets preview.
Warlords of Draenor - Active Mana Regeneration
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As you may have noticed, the most recent update to the patch notes included the removal of the Active Mana Regeneration, and I'd like to take a moment to explain that a bit.
First, I'd like to dispel some misconceptions about what Active Mana Regeneration was. Due to the similar name, and how it had its own section in the patch notes, some people were under the impression that it was as significant a feature as Active Mitigation was for tanks; that was not the case. It was quite minor in its impact. We found, based on internal testing, that in order to make it impactful, we'd have to make it much, *much* stronger. As it was, most forms of it were only worth using when you had mismanaged your Mana and were trying to recover. Based on its low and unintuitive usage, we decided to remove it.
Now, a fair question to ask is, “Why not just tune it stronger, so it *is* worth using?” We considered that heavily. There is probably a design where most of your Mana regeneration comes from active sources, and all healers spend a significant portion of their time and ability usage actively regenerating their Mana. However, that is a gigantic change to healer gameplay, for all healers. Many existing healers would not enjoy that style of gameplay, and we're not even sure that it'd be better gameplay for a new player anyway. Overall, we think that, while that option does seem like it could potentially function, it would not be good for the game.
So where does that leave healers for Mana management? Rest assured, healers will still have significant control over their Mana. The primary method for doing that is through spell selection. We've tuned healers such that they have a mixture of high efficiency and high throughput heals. If you maximize efficiency, you’ll actually be spending less than you regenerate (as of about blue dungeon gear), so your Mana bar will actually be going up. The way you’ll spend that Mana is through high throughput heals, which will let you burn more mana for more throughput. As your gear improves, you'll get more and more Spirit, so that your Mana refills faster while casting efficient heals. And that additional Mana will translate into more and more of your spell casts being high throughput ones, as you get better gear. The key, as it relates to Active Mana Regeneration, is that if you find yourself at 30% Mana, and the boss is still at 50% health, you do have something to do to catch up: lean more on your efficient heals, until you catch up. You'll never end up in a situation where you run OOM and are unable to cast anything. Also important to note, all healers have some way to deal minor damage with no Mana cost now, so that they have something to do when there is no healing needed, if you're the type of player that feels compelled to always be casting something.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Recent Bloody Coins Battlegrounds Hotfix
Thanks for all the feedback on this change. We agree that the chance to earn a Bloody Coin from the Fire-Watcher’s Oath buff felt too low, especially with all the competition for killing blows in Battlegrounds. We’ve just pushed a hotfix that will increase the chance of earning a Bloody Coin from a killing blow while Fire-Watcher’s Oath is active to 100%. Enjoy! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Warlords of Draenor Ability Pruning
One of our primary goals for ability pruning is to clean out things you rarely use, but still want to have keybound. Scare Beast, Hibernate, etc are perfect examples of those sorts of abilities. They're rarely (if ever) used in PvE, and only really usable in extremely niche cases in PvP. But you still want it sitting on your action bar, and filling out one of your keybinds, for those rare occasions in which you actually do want to use it.
It's important to remember that the point of ability pruning isn't to just get rid of spells for the sake of getting rid of spells. We want to free up action bar and keybind space. If we remove something that's kind of cool, but you wouldn't have bound (or maybe not even on your action bar), then all we've really done is removed something that's kind of cool. There is some value in clearing up extraneous stuff in the spellbook, but we don't want to remove anything fun to achieve that. Eagle Eye doesn't take up keybind or even action bar space for the vast majority of players, but it's still fun to use, even if you're just clicking on the icon in your spellbook to cast it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)what's the plans with death strike for frost/unholy? Or blood strike
Death Strike remains for all. Blood Strike is gone for all. (Celestalon)
Death Strike is a wast of resources for Frost/Unholy. Even in solo play. VR =/= DS
No, it's not, especially with baseline Dark Succor. (Celestalon)
Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Kinda noticed the new RFK Blind Hunter Bat Model. Will Hunters be able to tame it? x:
Yes! (Muffinus)
Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Does the +5% of Enhanced Pyrotechnics get improved by Critical Mass?
Yes. (Celestalon)
Can I assume the same for the +15% from Improved Pyroblast?
Yep. (Celestalon)
Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Glyph of shadow and glyph of stars, are they here to stay?
Yes. (Celestalon)
Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)Will MS generate emberbits for destruction? Fury for demo?
Nope. (Celestalon)
PvP
I'd be very surprised if they were more then a passing craze; heavily used to start, then trickling down to lightly utilized ;-)
We're attaching rewards to them (honor, strongboxes) and they're solo queue. I expect more people will do skirmish then rated. (holinka)
Solo queue is also working as well.
The whole point is a more casual approach to arena. Playing alone or with friends. (holinka)
So does solo queue only face other solo queue? Otherwise it's an automatic disadvantage versus pre-made
Skirmish Matchmaking will never be perfectly balanced. I suggest rated if that's what you want. (holinka)
feel like it would be more fun to play with all randoms than to face an OP comp on Skype. I suggest rated if you want to group up.
I think you're missing the intent of skirmishes. It isn't for serious competition, it's for fun. Fast queues are most important. (holinka)
why are player health pools still so high. saw tank at 100 with 272k. by end of exp numbers will be back to normal. fail squish?
Player health in particular was squished by less to allow us to get rid of resilience. All other numbers are much more readable (WatcherDev)
Reputation / Questing
I have noticed that rare spawns turn gold on normal after being defeated and no longer give good loot. Only kill once?
Those aren't really what I'd call "rare" spawns. They're events you encounter while exploring, with a one-time reward. (WatcherDev)
Dark Legacy Comics #444
DLC #444 has been released.
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