wow Legion Beta: Latest Blue Posts

[Zadina 923]

A couple of new builds were released in the Legion Beta this week and the blues have been busy answering questions and providing useful information. We have selected the most important of these blue posts.

The latest Legion Beta Build introduced two new features, Class Trials and the Beta character copy, which we discussed in a different post. In this article, we will focus on new info from blue posts written this week. Let's begin!

Court of Stars and The Arcway were two new dungeons that used to require an attunement. Why the past tense? Well, players noticed that after completing the required reputation grind and questlines to enter these dungeons, they already heavily outgeared them. Blizzard has decided to make these two dungeons Mythic only. The quests related to them will become optional, while Order Hall campaign quests that sent you to these dungeons will be readjusted. You can read the whole discussion thread on this issue here. You can check Blainie's video and impressions from running The Arcway in the Alpha in this thread.

Now, when it comes to the loot of Legion Mythic dungeons, the details are still pending. Still, Watcher gave us a rough idea:

Watcher

The details of the loot progression are still pending, and are/were waiting on a bit of code support to handle the final implementation. Completing higher-level Mythic dungeons should gradually raise the base item level of the rewards from the end-of-dungeon chests, with a more significant effect on the weekly reward chest for highest tier cleared. (source)

Blood of Sargeras is a new BoP crafting regeant. It was quite rare, since you could only get it from gathering and doing world quests. Some new ways to get this item have now been added:

Zugsworth

Hi friends - I just wanted to chime in that in the next beta build you should see more Blood of Sargeras dropping from non-tradeskill sources (dungeons, in particular). (source)

Ornyx

A bit more information here -

You will also see Blood of Sargeras from Disenchanting Rare and Epic items in a future beta build, as well as an increase in the cadence and quantity of Blood of Sargeras from Crafting World Quests in the Broken Isles.

ICYMI: Watcher discussed the idea of BoP crafting materials during yesterday's Developer Live Q&A (short summary of that here). Next week's Live Q&A covers professions specifically, so feel free to submit questions on this topic here.

(source)

Let's move on to specific class information. Frost Mages will see various changes in Legion, but some of these changes will be reverted. Frostfire Bolt has been removed and initially the new Brain Freeze would have a 10% chance to reset the cooldown of Frozen Orb. Players didn't like this change at all and thus Frozen Orb is now working as it always did: it's a 60-sec cooldown that grants Fingers of Frost (there was a bug in the Beta that didn't award the FoF charge, but it was fixed). It was also revealed that a new spell will be used to spend your Brain Freeze procs (essentially replacing Frostfire Bolt). Lastly, it was explained that the new spell Ray of Frost isn't intended to work with Ice Floes.

Sigma

Thanks for all the feedback on Frozen Orb. There are some pretty significant changes coming next build that should address this (edit: as those of you watching the Q&A stream with Watcher are hearing about just this moment, as it turns out). In particular, Frozen Orb will return to the role that it had in Warlords: a 60-second cooldown that you use for AoE or for a burst of Fingers procs, not a spell prompted by a rotational proc. We are adding a new single-target spell to fill the rotational role of interacting with the Brain Freeze proc.

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Note that the wording of Ice Floes was recently changed to specify "cast time less than 10 seconds", to clarify that it's not intended to work with Ray of Frost. The gameplay of Ray of Frost is that it's a ramping damage burst that rewards you for anticipating when you can remain still for 10 seconds (or at least, 8 or 9 out of the next 10 seconds). (source)

 

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We will also be bringing Frozen Orb's Fingers of Frost chance up, and making it no longer speed back up after the first time it slows down. (source)

Another Mage question led to the revelation of useful info about DoTs and crowd-control abilities. Apparently, all crowd-control abilities that break from damage will clear damage over time effects when applied; this applies to all classes.

Phalanx

Actually, Polymorph should remove all damage over time effects when cast on targets in PvP. We've changed all crowd-control abilities that break from damage to clear damage over time effects when applied. (source)

People had concerns about how powerful Blood Death Knights and Holy Paladins felt in PvP. The first ones dealt too much damage, while the latter ones healed too much without trying. The team is toning down talents for both of these classes.

Phalanx

Much of the blood DK damage was coming from the Honor talent "Blood for Blood" which we've toned down in an upcoming hotfix, and the talent will no longer remove the rune cost from Heart Strike. The idea of the talent is to give Blood DK's an option to increase their damage at the expense of a survivability loss (most tank specs have an honor talent similar to this), it was just overtuned.

As for Holy Paladins, the honor talent "Avenging Light" was probably too good now that Holy Light heals for so much. We've toned that one down too, which should be live now.

Thanks for the feedback!

(source)

Lastly, Mythic Nighthold raid testing is scheduled for tomorrow night. You can find all the details here.