Warlords of Draenor Beta - Build 18982, WoD Proving Grounds, Blue Posts, Wowcraft #12

Stay up to date with all the news regarding Warcraft, and anything related, courtesy of MMO-champion.com!

Topic/Postby Haggle » 04 Oct 2014, 01:40

Warlords of Draenor Beta - Build 18982, WoD Proving Grounds, Blue Posts, Wowcraft #12

Image Rift Guardians on Minimap, Play Your Way's Favorite Build, Torment 6 vs GR 25

Image BlizzCon NA Regionals Fantasy League - Free Card Packs, Versus Series: Fire vs Colma, WCA Day 2

Image Upcoming Skins Preview: Anub'arak, Azmodan, Hallow's End, and Master; Into The Nexus #23

Warlords of Draenor Beta - Build 18982
Our fourth beta build of the week is here with another round of balance changes.

Spell Changes
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
Item Set Bonuses
Image Druid (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Talents
  • Force of Nature healing now scales with 163.6% of Spell Power, down from 327%.
Image Mage (Forums, Talent Calculator)
  • Living Bomb DoT now scales with 25% of Spell Power, up from 12.5%. Final damage now scales with 80% of Spell Power, down from 90%.
Talents
  • Blast Wave damage now scales with 200% of Spell Power, up from 113%.
  • Ice Nova damage now scales with 200% of Spell Power, up from 113%.
  • Living Bomb DoT now scales with 25% of Spell Power, up from 12.5%. Final damage now scales with 80% of Spell Power, down from 90%.
  • Supernova damage now scales with 200% of Spell Power, up from 113%.
Frost
  • Fingers of Frost now increases Ice Lance damage by 100%, up from 25%.
  • Ice Lance damage now scales with 40% of Spell Power, down from 63%.
Image Paladin (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Retribution
  • Seal of Justice now causes melee attacks to deal 12% of weapon damage additional damage, up from 10%.
Image Rogue (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Talents
Assassination & Subtlety
Subtlety
  • Backstab now does 160% of weapon damage, up from 145%.
Professions
Inscription
  • War Paints Additional paints are created when your Inscription skill is 600 or higher. May also create Sorcerous Water and Earth. Cooldown resets daily. Inscription. 3.5 sec cast. 1 sec cooldown. Reagents: Cerulean Pigment (40). Tools: Virtuoso Inking Set. 10). Tools: Virtuoso Inking Set.
  • War Paints May also create Sorcerous Water and Earth. Inscription. 3.5 sec cast. Reagents: Cerulean Pigment (40). Tools: Virtuoso Inking Set. 10). Tools: Virtuoso Inking Set.
Raid & Dungeon Abilities
  • Backdraft A plume of heat and smoke backdrafts from the rear of the ship, inflicting 40,000 Fire damage to enemies. The more cannon barrages occur, the more severe this explosion is. 3 sec cast. 5 sec cast.
  • Backdraft A plume of heat and smoke backdrafts from the rear of the ship, inflicting 40,000 Fire damage to enemies. The more cannon barrages occur, the more severe this explosion is. 3 sec cast. 5 sec cast.
  • Berserker Leap Koramar crashes down on enemy targets, inflicting 10,000 5,000 Nature damage to enemies within 8 yards of his landing. 10 yd range. Instant.
  • Big Boom Bombsquad primes his core and charges towards an enemy, inflicting 20,000 Fire damage to enemies within 7 yards upon detonation. Melee range. 1 sec cast. 3 sec cast.
  • Bulwark Protects the caster in a defensive shield, absorbing 6,000,000 damage. Instant (Channeled). 720,000 damage. Instant (Channeled).
  • Flaming Arrows Inflicts 7,000 Inflicts 4,000 Fire damage every 2 seconds. 300 yd range. Instant.
  • Gutshot Fires a slug inflicting 15,000 8,000 Physical damage. 50 yd range. 2.5 sec cast.
  • Malfunctioning Jumper Cables 9000-XL Neesa's jumper cables crackle and release a chain of lightning, inflicting 22,500 11,250 Nature damage to 3 enemies. 100 yd range. 2 sec cast.
  • Rapid Fire Zoggosh focuses on a single enemy, rapidly firing at them and all enemies standing in between for 3,600 2,700 Fire damage every half second. 300 yd range. Instant.
  • Savage Mauling Dreadfang snarls and leaps towards his prey mauling them savagely, reducing their movement speed by 45% and inflicting 12,000 7,200 Physical damage every 1 sec. for 6 sec. Limited to 1 target. 45 yd range. 6 sec cast (Channeled).
  • Shattering Blade Koramar skims his blade across the ground, causing melee sparks that inflict 15,000 11,250 Fire damage to enemies within the area of effect. 40 yd range. 1.5 sec cast.
  • Storm Surge Inflicts 111,111 Inflicts 13,333 Nature damage to enemies in the lightning blast. Unlimited range. Instant.
  • Thundering Stomp Deals 30,000 Deals 15,000 Physical damage to enemies within 50 yards. 0.6 sec cast.






Warlords of Draenor - Proving Grounds
Today we are taking a look at the tweaks that have been made to the Warlords of Draenor version of proving grounds.

  • A few scaling changes have been made:
    • Enemies now scale based on your character's level.
    • Enemies now scale based on your item level, down to a certain minimum item level.
    • These changes, along with many of the other Warlords of Draenor changes, should help specs that were previously underperforming due to having their item level scaled down in Mists of Pandaria.
  • The Mists of Pandaria Proving Grounds achievements are now Legacy achievements. Be sure to finish them before Patch 6.0.2!
  • A new set of identical achievements have been added for Warlords of Draenor.
  • Running Heroic Dungeons through the LFD tool requires you to have the Silver achievement or better. You can still form your own group and go to the dungeon without it.
  • Completing a Bronze level achievement will give you a rare item level 610 weapon, which is a nice and easy weapon to get for alts that don't have one of the Garrosh Heirlooms, which scale to item level 620.
  • A new location, new trials, and other improvements are still on the list of things that would be nice to do in a future patch.
Level Type Spec Slot Name Model Viewer 610One-handed AxeMeleeOne Hand ImageHandaxe of TrialsModelviewer

610Two-handed AxeMeleeTwo Hand ImageGreataxe of TrialsModelviewer

610BowPhysical DPSRanged ImageLongbow of TrialsModelviewer

610One-handed MacePhysical DPSOne Hand ImageSkullthumper of TrialsModelviewer

610One-handed MaceSpell DPSOne Hand ImageCudgel of TrialsModelviewer

610PolearmPhysical DPSTwo Hand ImageSkullcutter of TrialsModelviewer

610StaffSpell DPSTwo Hand ImageStaff of TrialsModelviewer

610DaggerPhysical DPSOne Hand ImageLockbreaker of TrialsModelviewer



Tank Squish and Upcoming Resolve Changes

Originally Posted by Celestalon (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Tanks for all of the feedback.

Warning, the following is complex and techy; you don't need to know this in order to tank in Warlords.

As we've described, the design of Resolve is intended to maintain a balance between abilities that use percentage effects (such as Shield Block) and those that use flat amounts (such as Shield Barrier). In the below I'm just going to refer to "Barrier" and "Block" as examples, but this applies to all tanks' active mitigation and healing.

An important factor there is where the balance is at with no resolve. Obviously, if you're fighting a critter that's doing 10 damage to you, Barrier is going to win (and that's fine). So, we have to choose a starting point for Barrier with no Resolve. At that level of incoming damage, Block vs Barrier is balanced; beyond that, Resolve kicks in and starts bringing Barrier up.

When we implemented this version of Resolve, we chose that starting point as being a hard-hitting outdoor creature (or pack of creatures). We chose that so that you'd see Resolve taking effect as you learn to play in solo content. In order to achieve that, we had to bring the static abilities like Barrier down much lower, so that with no Resolve, they were balanced with Block against the hard-hitting outdoor creature (which is still pretty weakly hitting, in the grand scheme of things). We implemented that by making Barrier (and similar) 60% weaker at baseline, which is the right balance point against that hard-hitting outdoor creature.

However, that has some downsides as well. It feels negative, and it also means that for tanks with heals, out of combat healing yourself up after a fight is quite slow. So, we're going to revise that starting point up to be a hard-hitting dungeon creature, which makes the abilities balanced at their natural effectiveness; no 60% reduction needed. This means that Barrier will be stronger before that point, but Resolve won't kick in at all until you're being hit by a hard-hitting dungeon creature (or equivalent). To reiterate, this has no functional difference above that; self-healing will be unchanged against a raid boss, for example.

Again, thanks for the feedback on this, and for following along through our iteration process. It helps!

P.S. For theorycrafters, the 8.5 changed to a 3.4 in the Resolve formula.




Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Beta Build Frequency
I know a lot of you have expressed concerns that you haven't gotten much time in game to test; totally a fair point, I completely understand where you're coming from. What's important to keep in mind is that at this point in the testing cycle, some of the most important testing that you guys provide is in automatically generated crash reports and such.

We do a lot of testing in-house, but we can't easily replicate either the sheer number of testers, nor the various amounts of hardware types all logging in from across the globe. When we create new builds, we hop on immediately and start testing through various methods. But in order to get a really good feel for the overall quality of the build we rely on you guys logging in by the hundreds or thousands. If/when you crash, we gather that data automatically and immediately, and gives us a really good insight into things. Same thing for server crashes, disconnects, world server down issues, etc.

The good news is this stuff happens more or less automatically. So even though it feels that you're not personally able to put in a lot of hours testing, you're still giving us critically important data as we work to get a stable build ready for release.

I don't want this to discourage any of you from entering Feedback or Bug Reports (either in-game or through the forums), that still is still valuable as well. But I just want to let you know why we're pushing a lot of builds and what it means to you all. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

FEEDBACK: Challenge Modes
Bloodmaul Slagmines now has a 17:30 gold timer. Went in with comp prot war, holy priest, shadow priest, boomkin and frost mage.

It really felt like it was tuned around abusing chi explosion from brewmasters. Getting 17:30 with a non-optimal comp is ridiculous. In mop its pretty easy to get gold with any comp. not sure if you want these to be impossible for some classes or not.

That time is not final - it was a test to make sure we could cleanly hotfix completion times. What was the best time you were able to manage with that group?

The philosophy is that Gold should be doable with any reasonable comp (i.e. not 4 of the same class or something), though of course some group makeups may fare better than others. It's also important to remember that the intended tuning for Gold is what Gold felt like in Mists in 5.0. Nowadays in 5.4, with power creep from sockets and other sources, it's a far different story, so a direct comparison isn't ideal. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)




Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Image Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
lone wolf MM hunter survivability is nonexistent. Other classes can tank extreme dmg, you are instant dead as hunter, in a stun.
The design of talent system is not every talent is equally viable for every situation. (holinka)
My advice: if you aren't finding success with a talent in a specific situation, try a different talent. (holinka)
I expect Lone Wolf will be popular in Ashran and perhaps RBGs. (holinka)

Items
They appear on loot acquired from end-game systems that are not vendor-driven.
I guess that rules out heroic dungeons, but does crafting count as an end-game system? What about Challenge Mode loot boxes?
Heroic Dungeons and Crafting have it. CM loot boxes should as well. Apexis vendor does not. (olandgren)

is the price of Alliance chopper going to stay 100k? NTK because few players have 100k to spend including myself.
I do not know of any plans to lower it. it is intended to be a luxury mount. (nite_moogle)

PvP
Is the tank pvp debuff really needed now with 15% Expertise and the huge tank survival squish? Still hoping they will be useable.
We could lower the debuff. What has been your experience? (holinka)

please increase the rep gains from arathi basin and warsong gulch as there very slow to get
They have been increased in warlords (holinka)




Wowcraft Episode #12 - How To Quest
Wowcraft is back with a new episode after taking a month off.




More...
User avatar
Haggle
Rhyme News Reporter
 
Posts: 5159
WWW

Return to Warcraft News



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users

cron