wow Live Developer Q/A Round-up: Oct 5

[Stan 5,020]

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas conducted a live developer Q/A earlier today. Krokul Flute will be account-wide in a future hotfix and Legendary tokens in Patch 7.3.2 will start to drop, once you have all Legendary items for your class.

Argus

• Krokul Flute will be account-wide in a future hotfix.
• No plans to allow flying on Argus, because of how the new zones were built.
• The team made a lot of Argus stuff account-wide (Netherlight Crucible, Invasion Points, Antoran Wastes), but in order to unlock certain world quests, you still need to finish the Argus campaign (e.g. Mac'Aree). This is due to issues with phasing in specific areas.

Artifacts

• Artifact appearances can still be unlocked after Legion with the exception of A Challenging Look (Mage Tower) & Keystone Master.

Artifact Knowledge

• AK goes up by 1 every week and it's account-wide. By the time Antorus opens, you will be quickly able to catch up on your Artifact level to unlock Netherlight Crucible traits.
• The max cap is currently 55 and there are no plans to add additional AK levels in Legion.
• It's fairly simple to level up off-spec Artifacts to increase your versatility and there's no real reason to max out your main spec Artifact, because the DPS gained from a single Concordance of the Legionfall rank is pretty negligible (~1% per rank).

Class Balance

• No big balance updates are planned before Antorus opens. Class tuning will happen after the raid is accessible.
• The team's satisfied with Tomb of Sargeras balance.
• The team plans to add more utility to classes. We'll probably see a return of certain abilities that have been removed when Legion launched.
• Blizzard uses both internal and external data when it comes down to class tuning.
• In some cases, Blizzard's internal data does not coincide with external data (WarcraftLogs), but players only have access to the latter.
• Balance is an important aspect in a WoW. You do not perform simulations in single-player games, where the only goal is to finish the game.
• Oftentimes, community perception of balance negatively affects your gameplay experience. A spec may be considered weak, because the perception is built only upon external data.

Legendary Items

• The Legendary tokens added in Patch 7.3.2 will only drop after you've collected all Legendary items for your class (main). They are used to funnel Legendary items to your alts. Use of the Legendary tokens could be expanded upon in the future.
• Random Legendary distribution isn't an problem. The main issue is receiving a utility instead of a damage-increasing Legendary. Some Legendary items have been tuned down to reduce the gap between those two.
• When Antorus opens, players can complete a quest to upgrade their Legendaries to item level 1,000. The upgrade process is virtually the same as throughout Legion.
• The team isn't really satisfied with Legendary farming in old raids, so legendary drop rates are being monitored and we may see an increase in drop rate at least for the first few Legendary items that players get.

PvP

• PvP Seasons are mostly tied to opening of new raids and patches with ginormous class tuning. The devs simply do not want the last few weeks of a Season to be played after big balance updates.
• No plans to make Prestige account-wide. It should be an indicator of how good you are at a class.

Raids

• In Mists, there were different difficulty modes (10/25), so the final boss dropped two Mythic mounts. With just one difficulty now, the amount of Mythic mounts available from the final boss has been reduced to 1. 

RNG

• Randomness is a vital aspect of WoW.
• Progression wouldn't feel meaningful, if there wasn't a chance to get upgrades.
• There's more RNG in Legion, but it's equally distributed and less impactful.
• It's easier for players to obtain gear and sets as it was in the past.

Set Bonuses

• Tier set bonuses are a pain for the devs. Increasing the number of set items to 6 in Legion in order to allow equipping of 2 Legendary items leads to balance issues, where players use a 4-piece & 2-piece, so set bonuses from previous raids often see nerfs to make them less relevant.

Story

• In the future, we'll learn more about the story of Greymane & Sylvanas. Currently, the main focus is the Tomb and Argus (preparation for our final battle against the Legion).

World Bosses

• Na'zak the Fiend was up only once since Legion launch. Patch 7.3 added a new fixed world boss rotation and we should see him up soon. He drops the rank 3 Recipe: Potion of Prolonged Power for Alchemists.
• There is no incentive to buff the loot of world bosses.

VoD

On a lighter note, I'll just leave this here, yours as ever.

[hDszzT 103]

What a time to be a DH.

RIP Druid mains.

[Lucawa 0]

1 hour ago, Ammako said:

What a time to be a DH.

RIP Druid mains.

what why? what happend to druids? arent they viable anymore?

[Istinon 17]

'Once you have all legendarys for your class'

 

With my luck, that will be never, I have played Rogue and Warlock since Legion start, raiding actively with both and have 6 and 5 legendarys respectively. For one spec. I will never get any legendarys for my alts fast enough to get them Raid ready too, great.. :(

[Syktris 36]

Just create a token that can transform into a Legendary and make it BoA, then you choose if you want to use it on your main or alts.

If I need all legendaries on my main to get it for my alts, RIP Legs on alts.

[InfernoRFU 117]

9 hours ago, Stan said:

Artifact appearances can still be unlocked after Legion with the exception of A Challenging Look (Mage Tower) & Keystone Master.

Balance of power you will be mine....a year from now.

[Matthyas 1]

I don't quite understand legendary tokens. As a Paladin, if I have every legendary for retribution, does that mean I will start getting tokens, or does that mean I have to get all the legendaries for my protection and holy specs before they start to drop?

Edited October 6, 2017 by Matthyas

[DeathsDesign 92]

12 hours ago, Stan said:

No plans to make Prestige account-wide. It should be an indicator of how good you are at a class.

This has no indication of how good a player is, it only shows how much they pvp compared to others.  Someone could be complete crap at a class but all they do is pvp because they don't want to pvp and their prestige level will climb faster than the player that is both a pvp'er and pve'er.

 

12 hours ago, Stan said:

There's more RNG in Legion, but it's equally distributed and less impactful.

And that's why previous teir was so integral to putting up numbers even when players had ToS 4 piece it just wasn't couldn't compare without it.  BM stomp being a big example here, I mean it created a whole new talent build and all new stat priority but without T19 the build just wasn't near as viable, with T19 the set was more than competitive with other builds/specs for Hunter.

 

12 hours ago, Stan said:

The team's satisfied with Tomb of Sargeras balance.

After most guilds have already started laying off and taking a break prior to Antorus, as well as most guilds have achieved the progression that they are comfortable with and had months and months of farm (the point where balance doesn't mean crap because guilds can clear it in their sleep) they are finally satisfied with ToS balance.

 

12 hours ago, Stan said:

There is no incentive to buff the loot of world bosses.

Except to "incentivise" players to actually kill the world bosses.  I mean if it doesn't give resources or AP I'm not interested in the Isles world bosses, and am meh on the Shore world bosses.

 

Just my two cents.

[hDszzT 103]

10 hours ago, Lucawa said:

what why? what happend to druids? arent they viable anymore?

 

13 hours ago, Stan said:

The Legendary tokens added in Patch 7.3.2 will only drop after you've collected all Legendary items for your class (main). They are used to funnel Legendary items to your alts. Use of the Legendary tokens could be expanded upon in the future.

 

[Genjisan 0]

3 hours ago, Matthyas said:

I don't quite understand legendary tokens. As a Paladin, if I have every legendary for retribution, does that mean I will start getting tokens, or does that mean I have to get all the legendaries for my protection and holy specs before they start to drop?

The Legendary tokens added in Patch 7.3.2 will only drop after you've collected all Legendary items for your class (main). I think that means only your Main Spec.

[DeathsDesign 92]

15 hours ago, Ammako said:

What a time to be a DH.

RIP Druid mains.

I just now got this.... and I main a druid :(  11ish legendaries per spec X 4 specs = never seeing a legendary token...

[hDszzT 103]

Also it's been brought to my attention that Rogues have one less legendary available than Demon Hunters, even though Demon Hunters only have two specs.

Meanwhile Druids have 32 in total... Rogues have 19 and Demon Hunters have 20.

[DeathsDesign 92]

Just now, Ammako said:

Also it's been brought to my attention that Rogues have one less legendary available than Demon Hunters, even though Demon Hunters only have two specs.

Meanwhile Druids have 32 in total... Rogues have 19 and Demon Hunters have 20.

So who thought it was a good idea to make the tokens available "ONLY" after a class has obtained "ALL" legendaries for the class?  I mean... what?... here's an idea.  Remove all legendary drops, make tokens only drop, you can right click the token then select the armor slot for the legendary that fits that slot...

[hDszzT 103]

That would completely defeat the purpose of legendaries in legion, but I agree it would be a good fix right now since they can't easily just remove legendaries at this point.

Next time, these effects should be baked into specs or used as tier/trinket bonuses, and this legendary system scrapped. MoP cloaks and WoD rings were good, and I'd argue design-wise the Insignia of the Grand Army is the only actually good legendary for Legion (though a case could be made for crafted legendaries.) They should continue down that path if they want legendaries to remain a part of the game in some form.