wow Patch 8.1 Coming to PTR Next Week?

[Stan 5,020]

Ion concluded yesterday's AMA with a livestream announcement and apparently, we'll learn more about Battle for Azeroth's first major patch on September 18 at 11AM PDT // 8PM CET.

Blizzard (Source)

Thank you to everyone for the time and energy that went into all the questions, and thanks again to the r/wow moderators for wrangling this beast of a thread. I tried to refresh the thread and go down the list of Top-upvoted questions as best I could, but I know that I missed the majority of the questions due to the sheer volume. I apologize if I wasn't able to cover the topic you wanted to hear about. I also look forward to going back and digging into the reply threads underneath my comments later on, since it was a bit too much to process in real time. 

When it comes to a lot of the questions asking for specific change, I know that my replies often trend towards explaining why we did a thing you're upset we did, rather than just saying we're going to change it immediately. At the end of the day, if it simply feels bad, an explanation from me probably isn't going to fix that. Change can and will still come to many of these areas, but that's something for the appropriate folks on the development team to discuss, and not something for me to just unilaterally declare here. From Azerite, to Warfront pacing, to Island Expeditions gameplay and rewards, to shamans and other classes, we have a lot to talk about. 

As I mentioned at the outset of this AMA, this is a beginning of an ongoing conversation. In some of my responses today, I referred to plans for our upcoming content update. That patch will be coming to the PTR very soon, and we'll be doing a livestream on Tuesday, September 18 at 11am PDT on the Warcraft Twitch channel where we'll discuss the major pieces of content in the patch. I look forward to continuing the discussion. 

Again, thank you so very much for your passion and feedback.

It's very likely that Patch 8.1 will go live on PTR shorty after the livestream.

What to Expect in Patch 8.1?

While nothing has been officially confirmed yet, it's safe to assume that the patch will include the following:

• New Continent/Raid: Nazjatar with Queen Azshara as the final boss
• Access to new Allied Races: Kul Tiran Humans & Zandalari Trolls
• Reputation Paragon for BfA reps
• The long-awaited Shaman Class rework

[Dejo93 984]

Tbh, I'm not even surprised he announced it considering the lack of content and the bugs in the game. I think the biggest missing thing was the lack of a zone like Suramar. Think about it. You progress through the zone, unlock new quests as you gain reputation, add some cool rewards and voila. Not to mention it  introduced the Nightborne, and later made them into an Allied race.

I hope they can fix this with Nazjatar

[malorin 3]

Hopefully Shadow gets a cool rework as well. At the moment it's pretty much abysmal.

[Zemerax 3]

2 minutes ago, malorin said:

Hopefully Shadow gets a cool rework as well. At the moment it's pretty much abysmal.

^ - This. 

 

Shamans and Feral have been all the talk since BfA Launched, but Shadow and Fire are two other specs that need some much needed love going into 8.1. 

[Ailsya 1]

Fire is only lacking the numbers, gameplay is there

[Hypersonic 113]

Shaman? Enchancement is pretty cool right now, I met yesterday a guy with 13K overall in a high key dungeon what is pretty cool I think. SP and FM need way more rework than shaman, but Blizz like fanatics with them..

 

up.: Oh oops I though to feral not shaman with that fanatic

Btw. all I want is meta reputation to BfA (I don't know that means the Paragon too?) to be able play with alts. 

Edited September 16, 2018 by Hypersonic

[Nerdkartoffl 0]

1 hour ago, Hypersonic said:

Btw. all I want is meta reputation to BfA (I don't know that means the Paragon too?) to be able play with alts. 

i'm hoping for this since MoP.....

Paragon: You gain more rep after exalted. If you get the repbar filled, you can turn in a quest on said rep

[Rhondis 148]

56 minutes ago, Hypersonic said:

Shaman? Enchancement is pretty cool right now, I met yesterday a guy with 13K overall in a high key dungeon what is pretty cool I think. SP and FM need way more rework than shaman, but Blizz like fanatics with them..

As someone who mains Enh Shaman, they are actually in a weird place. They may be pulling damage yes (in your group of probably 340-360), but what made Enh shine was the Artifact weapon back in Legion. Some of the traits on the weapon actually made the spec flow much better in terms of resource generation but now with it gone, and the Azerite pieces lacking severely in secondary stats such as Mastery and Haste we are actually relying more on RNG now than ever to get SS procs in order to dish out the required damage. Even then SS is still lacking in terms of damage with lower gear.

[dartbodman 64]

finally

[Zemerax 3]

4 hours ago, Ailsya said:

Fire is only lacking the numbers, gameplay is there

 

Fire needs its talents adjusted and to have phoenix flames become baseline. It's gameplay isn't as solid as it was in Legion, and some tweaks are needed, but you can say that I guess for most classes.

[Hypersonic 113]

2 hours ago, Nerdkartoffl said:

i'm hoping for this since MoP.....

Paragon: You gain more rep after exalted. If you get the repbar filled, you can turn in a quest on said rep

Ah so only like in Legion was.. that's sad.

2 hours ago, Rhondis said:

As someone who mains Enh Shaman, they are actually in a weird place. They may be pulling damage yes (in your group of probably 340-360), but what made Enh shine was the Artifact weapon back in Legion. Some of the traits on the weapon actually made the spec flow much better in terms of resource generation but now with it gone, and the Azerite pieces lacking severely in secondary stats such as Mastery and Haste we are actually relying more on RNG now than ever to get SS procs in order to dish out the required damage. Even then SS is still lacking in terms of damage with lower gear.

So basically this is about bad scaling and the RNG of Azerite pieces like as every second specializations and some basic issues with the overall flow of the playstyle? I feel the same with rogue except the scaling isn't  so bad, but energy regeneration not exist. Playing as Assa now is really weird if during full CD you have sometimes ~5 sec to just chill, you can't use anything because you have no energy, and this happens lot of times during a long fight, really boring to play with it, especially on single target. Thats why I now leveling a caster, there at least have some fill. (Fire mage, mu-ha-ha)

[ArusVicious 156]

They also mentioned some Feral changes in 8.1. Super glad about that, because as a Feral main, we need it bad. I hope shamans and shadow get the love they deserve too!

[Troublestarter 0]

i got a warned by Stan because i said *back to the cave*?to a guy that post  fails or no true thing about a class even with the game it self when he said *shaman is good they saw one guy do 13k in mythic*  is back the cave flame this days ? oh my god what is this...

Edited September 16, 2018 by Troublestarter

[thurk 52]

ITT: People not understanding the difference between a spec being undertuned and needing a damage boost (feral, fire), and a spec needing (and having been promised) a rework that makes the spec play properly (enh/ele, spriest).

"All" the specs got major overhauls in the prepatch - "all" meaning every spec except enh, ele, and spriest.  They didn't get to them during beta.

[jinsu2301 273]

5 hours ago, thurk said:

ITT: People not understanding the difference between a spec being undertuned and needing a damage boost (feral, fire), and a spec needing (and having been promised) a rework that makes the spec play properly (enh/ele, spriest).

"All" the specs got major overhauls in the prepatch - "all" meaning every spec except enh, ele, and spriest.  They didn't get to them during beta.

actually feral is completely unchanged from Legion with the exception of making our artifact ability a completely undertuned talent. and they already confirmed that feral will get some overhauls in the near future.