Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We were hoping it'd be available today, but don't worry folks, Mischief is coming soon! Keep an eye on the news page for when this fel kitty invades!
Patch 7.1.5 - Secondary Stat Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The changes to secondary stat ratings in 7.1.5 have a few goals, and certain pieces are not yet in the current build.
Goal 1: Increase the importance of item level as a guideline for upgrading items. Moreso than in the past, large item level increases are not a reliable indicator of an upgrade due to the variance in power of secondary stats on an item. Increasing the amount of rating that you need per percentage of a secondary stat tips the balance of an item’s power more heavily toward primary stat. We’re okay with very small item level upgrades being a tougher choice, but some specs are currently passing up 15+ item levels in favor of secondary stats. That shouldn’t be something players are encouraged to do – with the occasional exception on rings and necks, which brings us to our second goal.
Goal 2: Improve rings and necks. The removal of primary stats from those slots on Legion gear means that your choices of secondary stats there are impactful, which we like. However, they still suffer from the problem of secondary stat distribution dominating the choice of which item to equip. We’ve increased how heavily item level affects the amount of stats on Legion rings and necks in 7.1.5, which will make significant item level jumps a clearer indicator of an upgrade on these slots. You’ll still find situations in which secondary stat choice is more important than item level for rings and necks, which is intentional; we’re just dialing it back a bit.
Goal 3: Don’t lower player power. This is a key part of the overall strategy that isn’t yet complete. Right now, on the PTR, player power is definitely down a few percent compared to live. The next build will have changes that increase the total amount of stats given by all items above level 800 to account for this gap, such that the overall power of your equipped items should be about the same (if not slightly higher) than it is currently in 7.1.
As you might expect, these changes will affect some classes more strongly than others. More overall character power will come from your primary stats than it did before, so all of your abilities will hit harder, even if they crit less or happen less frequently. Additionally, as we continue tuning for Patch 7.1.5, we’ll make adjustments as necessary on a spec-by-spec basis.
Apologies if I'm reading this wrong. But it sounds like the plan is to make us require more of a secondary stat, then provide us a higher value of secondary stats on existing gear. Isn't this counterproductive or am I just derp?
It's a tough bit of mathematical gymnastics that's tough to explain succinctly, but the long and the short of it is that the way that the item's primary stat (or sheer amount of secondary stats, in the case of rings and necks) make the higher-ilevel piece an upgrade more often.
I think they need to look into specs that rely on extreme cases of secondary dependence and adjust those specs accordingly. This blanket nerf is going to cause more problems.
That's what I was getting at in the last paragraph
Patch 7.1.5 Feedback - Survival Hunter
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Sorry for the delay in replying to this. Long story short, we agree with the concerns laid out in this thread: Waylay as a damage mechanic isn’t playing well, and the increased trap cooldown is a nerf that undermines other utility upgrades. We’ve been discussing exactly what we want to do about it, and can share some details:
For starters, the Trap cooldown is going back to a baseline of 30 seconds, just like it is in Patch 7.1. We had initially increased it to 40 based on some concerns that Hunter crowd control might end up too powerful in some situations, but after further consideration, we don’t think that’ll be necessary.
Regarding Waylay, the original intent of the passive was to reinforce Survival’s niche as trap experts (especially with other Hunter specializations getting traps again) by rewarding clever placement of traps when you’re able to anticipate your enemy’s movement. After all, the very nature of a trap is a hazard set ahead of time for an unsuspecting victim, whereas traps today often end up feeling more like lobbed explosives. However, in group gameplay, the movement of your targets is largely outside of your direct control, and any sort of rotational damage benefit of Waylay is likely to be far more frustrating than fun. We’re going to remove the damage-increasing benefit that Waylay provided to Explosive Trap and let its bonuses focus purely on utility. With the Freezing Trap and Tar Trap cooldown now unchanged, this makes Waylay simply a new utility perk over what Survival has on live, and we’re excited about some of the potential ways Hunters can make use of it in both PvE and PvP.
As an aside (and this is relevant to all classes and specs), part of our goal to keep patches coming at a steady pace in Legion means that you’re likely to see more half-completed ideas and strange experiments on PTR than even veteran testers might be used to in previous expansions. Just because a change shows up in a PTR build does not mean that it’s something the team views as a final design (or even a design we’re necessarily happy with). This has been especially true with 7.1.5, and we’ve done a poor job of communicating that thus far. We’d like to apologize for that failing, and it’s something we’re actively working to correct.
PTR Changes and Developer Notes
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)
To maybe give a little more hope, we had several meetings and discussions yesterday about ways to improve our internal processes so that we can converse more freely and immediately on in-development changes. Some of those improvements have already been made, and I'm personally hoping the difference will be noticeable over the next few weeks.
As a guy who works in Dev, the amount of reasons for silence, from "We have no solution and don't want to bring it up without one" to "Policy to not talk about changes until finalized", is sometimes ludicrous.
We've typically shied toward the former more than we probably need to. Historically we've wanted to be able to say how we're fixing an issue before we say anything, but I think that "we're going to fix this, just haven't decided how yet" is still a good message to get across in the meantime.
Just a side suggestion: Why not follow the HotS, OW and SC model, and do small explanations with each change in the changelogs? Is it because there are just too many different specs in wow and too many changes for it to be viable?
That's part of it. We typically do add those explanations for major hotfixes or release notes. Agree that we need more of that for PTR changes.
BlizzCon Cosplay - Sombra
Sombra was at BlizzCon this year and this video shows a little bit of the work that went into making the costume.
Jay Wilson's Insights into Vanilla Development, Diablo Brawl Coming to Hearthstone
Tri-Class Card Drop Rates Fixed - Affected Players Will Receive 33% of Packs Opened as Compensation
