wow Live Developer Q/A Roundup: April 27

[Stan 5,018]

Roundup of today's Live Q/A with Game Director Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas. Tomb will open somewhere between mid to late June. Exalted reputation requirement for Class Mounts was removed. Legendary items will be upgradable through essences, similar to 7.1.5.

Legion Class Q/A was considered multiple times, but talking about a single spec wouldn't be too compelling to viewers playing a different class.

Broken Shore

• The team didn't want players to feel overwhelmed with all the content on Day 1, which is why they went for gating

Class Mounts

• The Exalted reputation requirement (Armies of Legionfall) was removed and once you finish the Legionfall campaign (Breaching the Tomb), you can start working on getting your Class Mount

CRZ Issues

• They're acutely aware of it and don't like server hopping, it's definitely on their radar
• In Legion they introduced server sharding which made Legion launch smooth
• Some addons encourage behaviors that do not complement this tech (World Quest Group Finder)

Demon Assaults

• Won't reward Armies of Legionfall reputation 
• They would have to sprinkle all rewards everywhere
• It's okay to have activities up that offer distinct rewards (AotL reputation / Nethershards) that do not interest you
• Don't need Nethershards? Don't do the Sentinax
• Legion Assaults are great source of Nethershards. If it's up in a zone you've got your emissary up, it's super time efficient

Excessive Order Resources

• Spending 7,000 per week for getting 3 Seals of Broken Fate is a significant drain
• They may offer a sink in the future, but nothing is planned for now
• It's good to have excessive resources so that players don't feel forced to do World Quests

Heirlooms

• Coming in the next 7.2.5 build

Legendary Items

• New Legendary items will be introduced in 7.2.5
• If you have all Legendaries for your spec, you will don't need to micromanage loot spec, off-spec Legendaries will drop automatically
  • E.g. Brewmaster Monk who has all Legendaries for his spec will see WW / MW Legendaries drop
• Blizzard is happy with the current Legendary acquisition rate
• There will be a quest that offers a new Distilled Titan Essence to upgrade 940 Legendary items to 970

Mythic+ 

• Week 1 Tomb: Nothing Changes
• Mythic Tomb Opens: Mythic Cap goes up to 15, where weekly cache is comparable to Mythic Tomb and Mythic+ loot to Heroic Tomb loot
• According to completion rates / completion times / 2-chesting / 3-chesting, things are in a good space right now, no plans for nerfs
• Overall, affixes are good, learning curves (Fel Explosives), Grievious runs, people put on Prydaz etc.It's good to evolve different strategies for different affixes

Nighthold Mythic

• Progression is fluid, Elisande & Gul'dan are subject to nerfs

Patch 7.3

• We'll go to Argus and there's a new raid, more information not available so far
• There will be no Class-specific quests in 7.3. Armies of Legionfall represents all the classes united

Reputation Paragon

• Paragon emissaries have underwhelming rewards compared to normal caches. This will be discussed in the future

Timewalking

• Black Temple is tied to Burning Crusade Timewalking.
• Blizzard wants to come to a point where every Timewalking week will have a Timewalking raid associated with it

Tomb of Sargeras

• Will open mid to late June
• More testing will be done on PTR (LFR Wing 1 opens this weekend)
• Items will have a +30 item level ceiling Gear will Titanforge to 955

Misc Questions

Why are external buffs like Innervate and Greater Blessing of Wisdom still a thing? Did we learn nothing from Symbiosis?

• It doesn't feel good to need an external buff to feel viable.
• Disc Priests in 7.2.5 received changes to be less dependent on Innervation.
• Such spells help class identity
• It's better to fill a blank: bring the player, not the class.
• When you're looking for players, it's better to realize that you need a class that brings a buff rather than the highest item level player in the queue.
  • You needed 5 Holy Priests for Felmyst. You could not be viable as a melee DPS if you didn't have a Warrior to give you Battle Shout, but that was nearly 10 years ago

Will the Horde get an update on what's happening on their side? Sylvanas / Blightcaller / Volj'in?

Vol'jin's dead. It's good not having to force this by a symmetry. They'll add a Horde part of the story when they feel it's right. At the start of the Broken Shore experience, Horde did have an additional cinematic.

Will we ever be able to use Weapon Illusions on our Artifact?

No. It was a really early decision by the Art team when they started working on Artifact weapons

Will we be able to redo Mage Tower Challenges?

Wasn't designed to be a repeatable thing, but this will be done in the future