wow Patch 8.0.1: Leveling Speed Changes & Dungeon XP Hotfix

[Stan 5,022]

Here's the second round of blue posts dealing with bad mob scaling in Patch 8.0.1, end-of-dungeon experience rewards, and Ion's stance on the leveling speed in the range of 60-80.

This is a follow-up to the first round of blue posts about leveling issues posted yesterday.

TL;DR

• Legion mobs in the outdoor world had their health pools decreased to offset the power loss from disabled Artifacts and due to a potential increase in difficulty between WoD and Legion questing.
• Blizzard has identified an issue with the dungeon completion bonus and players were receiving only 1/5th of the XP they should be getting.
• Game Director Ion Hazzikostas said the team failed to pinpoint the exact aspect of scaling that they failed to account for. They'd prefer a targeted solution as opposed to just applying a bandaid fix that could mask deeper issues and potentionally cause more problems in the future.
• Leveling in the 60-80 range takes 15% longer now and they're working on a set of changes to fix it.

Blizzard (Source)

Legion Mob Scaling

Just had a little bit more info regarding Legion mob HP specifically:

The mobs in the outdoor world Legion had their HP (and power) lowered in 8.0.1 due to de-powering of Artifact Weapons. This was done so that there wouldn't be a sudden increase in difficulty between Warlords of Draenor and Legion questing, as well as to prevent a sudden increase in difficulty at 110 for players engaging in outdoor content such as World Quests compared to 7.3.5. The current plan is for Legion content to be tuned to be more in-line with the rest of the leveling curve in a future patch.

Dungeon XP Hotfix

Good morning all!

We identified an issue with the dungeon completion bonus which meant that players were only receiving 1/5th of the EXP they should be getting (due to the way EXP works in a group). I've been informed that this issue should now be resolved, so you should be receiving a large amount of EXP upon completing a dungeon now. If this isn't the case please do let me know.

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas

The following was just posted by Watcher in the NA forums, copying it here for discussion:

If any of the communication thus far, or the lack of visible action, has given the impression that we don't consider the issues raised in this thread and others like it to be a problem, I'd like to emphatically state that nothing could be farther from the truth. 

At this point, the feel and pacing of the level-up experience is a top priority for the team. We made deliberate changes to the feel of combat six months ago in 7.3.5, moving away from a world where low-level players (especially with heirlooms) could often kill outdoor enemies in 3-4 seconds, and where dungeon mobs died so quickly that a caster with a long windup might not even get a single spell off. Those changes were controversial at the time, but we stand by them as an improvement to the overall pacing of the game. But we also think that those changes went quite far enough, and have absolutely no desire or intent to continue moving in that direction. Nothing about the pre-patch was deliberately intended to make combat take longer than it did previously.

So why haven't we fixed it yet? Honestly, because we genuinely don't know where exactly the problem lies, and we don't want to make a blind blanket change that actually misses the real source of the problem. That's why much of Ythisens' and others' messages thus far have been asking the community for detailed examples to guide our search.

We "squished" stats and item levels, but this was done with the aim of being neutral with respect to the duration and lethality of combat. When we heard complaints about things taking too long to kill, we immediately assumed we'd gotten those calculations wrong. But a look at the raw data didn't suggest any clear anomalies. So we started testing empirically: We can run internal 7.3.5 builds, so we set up test characters (e.g. a level 70 wearing appropriate quest gear awarded by quests around that level - Item Level 115 in 7.3.5, Item Level 79 in 8.0.1) and fight outdoor enemies in 7.3.5, and then take the same character in 8.0.1 and fight the same enemies, and compare. 

We are seeing the same sort of discrepancies that folks in this thread and others have pointed out, but still have yet to pinpoint the exact aspect of scaling that we failed to account for. We want to understand WHY the numbers are off and fix the underlying cause: Were stats on gear reduced too much? Some aspect of creature armor or other combat calculations? Are our baseline values accurate, but the shape of the scaling curve wrong such that it’s particularly far off the mark in the 60-80 range? We would prefer a targeted solution versus just applying a bandaid fix that could mask deeper issues that could cause problems down the line, but at some point it’s not fair to give you a degraded experience for the sake of that investigation, so we’ll likely go ahead with a blanket health reduction in the near future while we continue to investigate.

Either way, the current state is not the game experience we intended, and it’s something we will fix.

There is another issue tangentially related to this discussion that I also would like to address: Many feel that it takes too long to level in the 60-80 range in particular, and that the combat pacing issues discussed here are just a piece of that larger problem. We agree – currently players are taking about 15% longer per level, on average, in that range as compared to before 60 or after 80. We’re in the process of assembling a set of changes that will smooth out the experience curve at level 60 and beyond, reducing the experience requirements for those levels.

We’ll have further updates as specific changes roll out, but we’re prioritizing our work on this problem and hoping to get these improvements out to everyone in the coming days.

[Vast 0]

Has the dungeon completion xp been fixed?

[Abom 31]

Too bad he didn't address the limp pre-patch.

[Vast 0]

Just now, Abom said:

Too bad he didn't address the limp pre-patch.

I've been enjoying the pre-patch pvp is a lot better now, still some things I'd liked to see changed though.

[Abom 31]

19 minutes ago, Vast said:

I've been enjoying the pre-patch pvp is a lot better now, still some things I'd liked to see changed though.

The PvP is great. It's that pithy pre patch campaign

[Ferari 0]

2 hours ago, Vast said:

Has the dungeon completion xp been fixed?

Yes. Atleast on level 20-30 characters than I ran.

[Baharok 234]

I was leveling my first alliance charakter ever this days (im at 81 now) and i also thought "man it never took so long in this area 60-80 somehow". Good that they will bring some changes.

[Haligy 0]

Hello mates i still wonder wanna leveling throught dungeons not Q if its ok now or ?

[Evincare 39]

1 hour ago, Haligy said:

Hello mates i still wonder wanna leveling throught dungeons not Q if its ok now or ?

I'd say it depends on class. Tank or Healer you could level mainly through Dungeons since queues are instant. Although you might run into frustration pretty quickly, depending on skill and awareness of group members - especially when healing. Dungeons can't be roflstomped anymore - the Cata ones in particular. Only switch to quests when you get bored of dungeons. I did a dungeon yesterday and got a ton of xp when completing it, so I guess it's fixed. Just make sure you run random dungeons as the random bonus outweighs the risk of running a dungeon multiple times and therefore without the dungeon quests. On that matter in the 60-80 (58-78?) bracket, a quick tip is to alternate random BC and random WotlK dungeons to reduce that risk of running a dungeon multiple times.

As pure DPS I would suggest to quest while always being in a queue - if only for the change of pace. That said, I still think you level faster by doing only quests effectively. What I mean by that is choosing zones, where questing flows naturally. Good ones are the zones, right next to the starting zones, since they scale to 60 now. The best one being Silverpine Forest for Horde (for Alliance I think both Westfall and Loch Modan work well, just don't pick the Barrens). Why Silverpine you might ask? For one, the zone and the questline are just amazing. Adding to that, the transition into Hillsbrad feels natural and Hillsbrad is another very well designed questing zone. Those two zones took my Nightborne well into the mid 40ies. Secondly those old 10-20 zones were designed for people without mounts so the distances are shorter and there's less travel time in general.

Apart from that, there's the obvious stuff: get looms, get Weapon and neck enchants (Mark of the hidden Satyr is insane), get the Flightpoint toys/Looms. And choose a spec, that offers the most benefit while leveling through quests. Openworld is way different from endgame raiding or Dungeons. That means either short burst windows (e.g. Arms Warrior) or high sustain with good survivability (basically any Tank or Aff Lock as examples). And: mobility is King.

Other specs work as well of course, if you pick talents accordingly. I levelled a fire mage recently and went for Conflag (was a 15 talent then) because I thought it was good... Everything took ages to kill. At some point I switched to firestarter (guaranteed Fireball or Pyro crit on Mobs above 90% health) and everything just fell over...

[PatrickHenry 293]

17 hours ago, Stan said:

So why haven't we fixed it yet? Honestly, because we genuinely don't know where exactly the problem lies, and we don't want to make a blind blanket change that actually misses the real source of the problem.

Thats the kind of honesty that I like to see.

[Haligy 0]

I thinking about druid healer or tank or priest not sure what is better holy or disc for healing

[Azael 1]

15 hours ago, Haligy said:

I thinking about druid healer or tank or priest not sure what is better holy or disc for healing

pick the one you like most ? that's the best advice I can give you ^^  

[Haligy 0]

i never play before these chars so im interest but not sure if start play now or after bfa relase