Update (6:50 PM EST): Added Watcher's post about Warlords of Draenor guild levels.
This Week In Review, Funny and Lucky Moments #51
Warlords of Draenor Menu
If you don't follow the news every day, it can be hard to find content after it falls off of the first page. A site specific search can help, but we are also adding a menu to the front page with links to all of the bigger recaps we do. This should make it easier to find content later on.
Warlords of Draenor - Guild Leveling Removed
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
What you're seeing in the current build is a change that's mid-implementation. Since the introduction of the guild system in Cataclysm, the nature of guild leveling and guild perks has shifted from being a reward for dedication and collective effort, to effectively being a penalty and barrier to entry for new guilds. We've made it easier to level guilds over the years, allowing low-level quests to count fully towards guild experience, and removing weekly caps on progress. That helps ease the barriers, but it's more of a band-aid than a true solution to the underlying problem.
Our current plan for Warlords is to effectively remove guild leveling (you could also think of it as "all guilds are automatically level 25"). We originally came up with two dozen perks in order to offer something at every guild level, but without the continued need for that granularity, we can streamline the system a bit. Many perks can just be rolled into default behaviors, since a majority of players already had them and the world was designed and tuned around their existence: Flight path taxis can just inherently move 25% faster instead of requiring "Ride Like the Wind"; Honor rewards and item costs can be balanced as if you had "Honorable Mention"; and so forth. For most players, who are in max-level guilds, nothing should perceptibly change.
We still want to incentivize guild membership, aside from the social benefits, so we're keeping conveniences like faster mount speed, instant guild mail, Mass Resurrection, etc., as exclusive benefits to all guilded players. The guild achievement system, and unlocked items and other benefits through completion of guild achievements, will remain as-is. We'd like to emphasize that system a bit more as a yardstick for collective accomplishment, rather than guild level which primarily just reflects individual effort.
The Cash Flow perk is obviously popular, though in most guilds it actually contributes less gold to the guild bank than something like Guild Challenges, since it only applies to looted coins. However, it also fuels some degenerate player behavior: if you've made an alt lately, you've probably noticed that you can't go more than a minute or two without receiving a guild invite - typically from "leaders" who are looking to recruit armies of often-unwitting players to both level guilds for later sale, and to increase the amount of Cash Flow gold that is siphoned into coffers to which only they have access. It can be a meaningful amount of gold for one player's pockets, but for something like a raiding guild, Cash Flow gold barely makes a dent in something like total repair costs. We're removing the Cash Flow perk in Warlords.
We do recognize that it's essential for guilds to have ways of financing their costs, and we will offer alternative, and more lucrative, options for doing so in Warlords (for example, bringing back some Bind on Equip epic drops in raids).
Warlords of Draenor - Death Knight Tier 17 Armor Set
Today we are taking a look at the Death Knight Tier 17 set, added in the latest alpha build.
Warlords of Draenor changes things up slightly by using one set of art for Raid Finder, one set of art for Normal and Heroic, and one set of art for Mythic difficulty. You can find the Raid Finder armor sets in our Raid Finder armor sets preview.
Warlords of Draenor - Horde Garrison Preview
The latest alpha build updated the Horde Garrison to show the lower level garrison that everyone starts with, which does not initially include an Orgrimmar portal, mine, fishing area, or other areas from our earlier preview.
Warlords of Draenor - Rogue Tier 17 Armor Sets
Our high quality Tier 17 Rogue set preview has been updated to include the previously missing Mythic shoulders.
Warlords of Draenor - Faction Hubs
Lore let us know that the cities in Frostfire Ridge and Shadowmoon Valley haven't had any work done to make them into faction hubs.
Warlords of Draenor Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion
Working on the dummies not showing up on some/all servers. Will try to catch up on this thread again soon; sorry for the slowness. Just swamped this week.
Last time I tested them, those dummies were acting like normal mobs instead traditional dummies; they kept me in combat even after a minute without perform any attacks, instead of allowing me to leave combat 1 or 2 seconds after no combat action done.
Yes, this is intended. You should still be able to run ~50yd away to drop combat.
EDIT: Reason being that there are some occasional wonkinesses related to combat and dummies, and we wanted to avoid all of that for your theorycrafting purposes. They're normal mobs that can't die (well, a couple can), and are permanently stunned.
Specials that are avoided don't give Vengeance/Resolve. It's mostly for a technical reason; auto attacks are much more standardized and so we can just check what the average auto attack would do and based it off of that. Specials can do all kinds of things, so are much harder to reliably handle, and are rare enough that we can handle balancing around them not granting Resolve.
Has weapon normalization changed? How is the damage stat on the character panel caculated? On live it displays the min/max damage of your current weapon after normalization.
Character sheet has not, and still doesn't, include normalization. Character sheet damage should be simply weapon damage + weapon damage from AP.
With the auto applied serpent sting for survival hunters does the first tick go off instantly on each application to make up for imp serpent sting being removed?
Currently, yes, though that's effectively an extra SS tick on every Arcane Shot which is kind of hidden. May simplify it out; the Arcane/Multi itself provides instant damage, so we could tune around that.
The new stat attunements read "You gain 5% more of the X stat from all sources." However, according to the character sheet, this only amplifies ratings. For example, on a Destruction warlock (who is crit attuned), gaining the 5% crit buff increases your crit by 5%, not 5.25%, and using Dark Soul: Instability grants 30% crit, not 31.5%. Is this intended?
Yes. Subtle distinction between the "Critical Strike" stat, and "X% increased critical strike chance". All of the attunements are multipliers on your ratings. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
PvE
So 25man raids award relatively more loot than 10man raids. Is this another way to encourage 25manning?
It's a recognition of the logistical challenge of running a larger group. In Warlords the ratio will be constant for all sizes. (WatcherDev)
Will 20 Mythic bosses drop 4 items or 5?
Most likely 5. (WatcherDev)
Is there max level normal dungeon in Warlords? Currently there aren't any announced for it.
There are 4: Shadowmoon Burial Grounds, Grimrail Depot, UBRS, and "Overgrown Outpost" (name not final). (WatcherDev)
Would like to know this as well. Will N/H flex up to 30?
30 is still the goal for the top-end, pending server performance analysis during beta. (WatcherDev)
Same for Raid Finder? 2 tanks / 8 heals / 20 DPS?
No, Raid Finder will still matchmake for 25, but can scale down as needed if people drop. (WatcherDev)
PvP
Are you guys even balancing BG teams? Facing off against a team of 6 healers with none in your team sucks.
We are but there might be times when we have to ignore that restriction to get a match going. (holinka)
any chance the bg part of the legendary will be removed soon? It's not fun for pve'rs or pvp'ers.
No plans to change the existing Wrathion legendary questline. Definitely lessons learned for the future, though. (WatcherDev)
are u going to balance silvershard mines anytime soon? very horde biased.
how is it horde biased? Alliance can get lava first but never tend to go for it in random for some reason. (holinka)
rated win rates on the map are 50/50. Random tends towards horde even though map is fairly balanced now. (holinka)
conquest gear BoE account Wide?
no chance (holinka)
I think BoA Conq gear isn't a good fix, but I feel zero compromise isn't an option unless you want alts to die.
Tanking MMR will die. I'm not concerned Alts will die. Because I have alts, and I don't tank MMR. (holinka)
The majority of people are not comfortable spending 20 minute dampening games to cap an alt with a 20k cap mid season.
Less than 0.5% of games are 20 minutes long. (holinka)
For myself I can say that I'll never gear up another character that way and cap 25k points with 180 per win. Thats complete madness
I don't tank MMR when I gear up my alts and I've done this on numerous characters. (holinka)
I'm helping friends cap at low mmrs on my mage. We need 4-5 hours to cap around 20k points
I'm sorry, but that does not sound like an outrageous amount of time. (holinka)
How that's not an outrageous amount of time? considering you have NO GEAR and that makes it not fun at all.
4-5 hours to have your character almost fully geared? That's not even a full week of raiding for most people. (holinka)
Professions
Can you make all professions give equal benefits including gathering ones, it is annoying to give up a gathering prof for stats.
That's precisely why we're removing the passive stat perks from professions - pick the prof you want, not the optimal one. (WatcherDev)
Weekly News Recap
Here is your chance to catch up if you missed a day of news this week!
June 22
We looked at the Druid Mythic Tier 17 set and the official female Orc preview.
Chris Robinson let us know that there is an upcoming artcraft on facial customization.
Doubleagent reached Level 90 while still Neutral.
This month's setup of the month was posted, with new Intel CPUs now released.
June 23
We looked at the Warrior Season 16 armor set.
Blizzard shared an official Tanaan Jungle preview, some Deserter Hotfixes for Rated PvP, and more Free Faction Changes.
June 24
We looked at the Hunter Tier 17 armor set and announced lower post requirements for moderator applications.
Blizzard announced that the old launcher will automatically be upgraded to the Battle.Net Desktop app in the coming weeks.
June 25
The new human male model was posted.
Warlords of Draenor Alpha Build 18471 went up, with the Draenei Male, Undead Male, Human Female, and Night Elf Female character models. There were also some new creature models, along with the regular spell and tier set bonus changes.
June 26
We looked at the Priest Tier 17 armor set and Warlords of Draenor beta was announced.
June 27
Warlords of Draenor beta went live with a large invite wave targeting long time players.
The faction hubs were moved to outside of Ashran.
June 28
We looked at the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds dungeon.
The heirloom tab will not make it for Patch 6.0.1.
Garrison specializations were removed and combined into the building perks.
There were several more replies to the moving of faction hubs to outside of Ashran.