Era 5 Ended, Season 6 & Class Spinning Wheel, Patch 2.4.1 Guide by Drahque
Dark Whispers Hero Taunt Hotfix, Old Gods, New Tricks - Win a 3D Printed Hearthstone Card!, Deck Spotlight: Choose One Party!
Shogun Artanis & Shadowpaw Lili Preview, Hero League Matchmaker Hotfix
Exploring Overwatch - Easter Eggs, AngryJoe's Overwatch Lambo Adventure in 360
Legion - Witch Hats
Legion adds some new Cosmetic Helm items that look like witch hats!
Level
Type
Slot
Name
Model Viewer
1
Cosmetic
Head
Hat of the First Sister
Modelviewer
1
Cosmetic
Head
Hat of the Second Sister
Modelviewer
1
Cosmetic
Head
Hat of the Third Sister
Modelviewer
1
Cosmetic
Head
Hat of the Youngest Sister
Modelviewer
Legion - Flying and the Pathfinder Achievement
Watcher shared some more information about the Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part One achievement.
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Just give us some info. Give us an estimate on when we'll actually get to fly again, assuming we do the required achievement elements.
Let me try to clear things up a bit, since I realize a single achievement out of context isn't exactly informative.
Overall, this is consistent with the plans we announced last year when we added the original Draenor Pathfinder achievement in 6.2.2, and hopefully does not come as a surprise. The underlying philosophy here is: explore and master the outdoor world on the ground, in order to unlock the ability to soar above it freely. This time around, since we have our design in place from the start of the expansion, we want to give players as much advance notice as possible, and allow everyone who cares deeply about unlocking flight to understand the requirements and begin progressing towards them immediately.
I can't give a detailed estimate of exactly when the next step will unlock. We have a solid patch plan in the works, but we need to remain flexible to adapt to player needs once the expansion launches, and there's no way to even hint at a date without it sounding like a promise. That said, I can say that Part One should represent a significant majority of the total effort required to ultimately unlock flight. Patch content will see players adventuring within new parts of the Broken Isles, and there will likely be one or two additional criteria associated with that content. At that point, players will unlock the ability to fly throughout the Broken Isles.
Finally, I've seen some concern about rep "grinding" associated with this achievement. All of the referenced reputations are earned by doing level-up quests and world quests associated with those factions throughout the Broken Isles. There are no mob-grinding components to any of these reputations. Frankly, the Legion Pathfinder achievement was much easier to design than Draenor Pathfinder was, simply because we have much more outdoor world content in Legion.
Official Role Forums Shutting Down May 6
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
On May 6, we will close this forum permanently.
Please save copies of any posts that you wish to keep before May 6.
Please take any new discussion about character roles to the class forum for your class
Thank you very much!
Legion - Hidden Artifact Effects
Archimtiros discovered a hidden mechanic for a Warrior Artifact!
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Basic mechanics for those uninterested in clicking links:
Buff procs on attack that would kill the player, giving them 8s of immunity. If they kill the target that triggered it within that 8s, they receive a substantial heal, if not they die. Not sure if it requires the killing blow (thereby limiting it's usefulness in raids/group content) or just for the target to die, but probably the former.
1. Are these effects meant to be hidden, or is there simply a missing spell ID, artifact trait, etc?
2. If not, what actually enables them? Are they baseline, tied to the equipped artifact, different per spec, and so on?
1) The former. When dealing with things as powerful as some of the artifacts players will be acquiring in Legion, sometimes mysterious things happen. Contrary to the spirit of the thread, I know. But there you have it.
2) See question 1.
Raid Testing Schedule - May 2-3
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
On Monday, May 2 and Tuesday, May 3, we will continue our Legion Alpha raid testing. (I'd initially suggested testing would be Fri/Mon, but we're moving the dates so people don't have to choose between their Diablo Season 6 ladder aspirations and raid testing.)
Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Mythic, of course, requires 20 and does not scale.
Monday, May 2
Il'gyoth, Heart of Corruption - Mythic Emerald Nightmare
13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)
Cenarius - Mythic Emerald Nightmare
15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
Tuesday, May 3
Chronomatic Anomaly- Heroic Nighthold
13:30 PDT (16:30 EDT, 22:30 CEST)
Grand Magistrix Elisande - Heroic Nighthold
15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of an alpha environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Disposing of Excess Relics
Thanks for the feedback! We'll be making sure relics can be vendored properly, as well as letting them be disenchanted, in an upcoming build. They're effectively filling the same loot niche as weapon upgrades have in prior expansions, so similar treatment makes sense. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Marksmanship Hunter Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
There was literally no gameplay change from the Hunter's Mark change.
That change was made to make it clear what affected it; the previous version made it seem like casting Arcane Shot more would give you more procs (which it never did; it's RPPM).
You don't think this is going to have the majority of us crop up autoshot trackers on the UI?
No, why would you? (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Brewmaster Monk Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
I'm really not trying to be difficult here, but I've seen my class slowly fall into uselessness and it would be great if a blue could respond if anything is even in the works. It honestly feels like y'all aren't listening to any feedback.
We've definitely heard the feedback. Brewmasters are currently in a really good looking spot, gameplay-wise. Tuning is yet to come and should improve the usability of a ton of talents.
You're able to macro ISB to the three usable abilities and just pound them for 8 minutes until either the boss is dead or we are. Is that intentional?
No; if you can provide any evidence that that is in any way even remotely viable, I'd love to see it. Not using Purifying Brew should be a colossal mistake.
Regarding the comments on interactivity, we've noticed that this seems to go hand in hand with whether you're still trying to treat ISB as an always-up thing or not. So much of the gameplay is tied to intelligently using your abilities right now, and perhaps it's too easy to gloss over that and think that A) Purify was nerfed (it wasn't), B) Purify is less important than ISB (it's not), or C) you should be keeping ISB up in order to survive (you shouldn't).
I'm curious to hear how people who are making use of both ISB and Purify feel.
EDIT: Same with Gift of the Ox. Skilled Brewmasters should be actively managing Gift of the Ox with very similar gameplay to how Expel Harm was used before. What happens when you try that?
EDIT 2: Further example: We're finding skilled Brewmasters are virtually unkillable right now, significantly overpowered.
Then the Brewmaster tank I had in my dungeon had no clue what he was doing because he just kept dying.
Totally possible. That is what is more concerning to us; that even skilled and experienced tanks aren't understanding the significance of their abilities or how to use them. Perhaps it just takes more time for the community to adjust to the new gameplay, in this case. Or perhaps there's a presentation problem in the abilities.
A) Purifying Brew does indeed purify more than it ever has before by a large margin. However, it still doesn't get rid of the immense amount of stagger still left ticking on you. #1 because it only does half of the total, #2 we take more direct hits than before, and #3 EXTREMELY LIMITED CHARGES.
B) If you use Purifying Brew too many times before Black Ox Brew is up again, your ISB falls. When ISB falls, your chances of instantly dying are very high. The options are only as thus: you die to the ridiculous stagger dot on you or you die from the next consecutive melee hit(s) with a Purified, but still immense dot on you.
C) If this was the intention, you've missed the mark. It's an absolute necessity to even have a presence in a group, raid, and sometimes even a solo setting.
Since Gift of the Ox is essentially gone from the game because of its abyssmal proc chance, awful placement, and low healing, it's readily dismissed. When a tiny yellow orb spawns inside of a mob, underneath the over-the-top graphics of every ability, or simply too far away to be picked up, you don't go over and pick it up.
With the loss of literally every person cooldown, I'm curious as to what you guys actually wanted to do by design. What SHOULD we be doing to survive since we don't have Guard, Expel Harm, Elusive Brew, or Ox orbs?
You're maintaining ISB, not Purifying much, dying to Stagger DoT, and getting few Gift of the Ox orbs. Those things are related.
You should be using ISB to maximize how much Purify clears, not solely for the smoothing.
You have a large health pool: use it. If you're above 75% health, using ISB is probably a waste. It's smoothing when you don't need smoothing, and it's reducing the number of GotO orbs that you're creating.
Gift of the Ox is absolutely massive, but it requires actively playing around your health pool to maximize.
We normally prefer to provide the abilities and world and let players determine how they want to play, and decide for themselves what the ‘best’ way for themselves to play is. In this case, we think that maybe just spelling out how we expect it to be played will help you all experience it better, give better feedback, and help identify the points of confusion you had that prevented you from reaching these conclusions. So, without further ado...
Celestalon's Guide to Mastering the Brew
Here’s how I play the new Legion Brewmaster. This is non-talent-specific, talents will be an additional layer on top of this.
Offensive Abilities
These are important because they establish threat, do damage, and give you more usage of your Active Mitigation abilities. They're best used in a priority list, with the key skill differentiator being maximizing Keg Smash usage, and not wasting any Energy while maximizing damage.
1. Always, ALWAYS save enough Energy and GCDs to Keg Smash exactly as it comes off cooldown.
2. Tiger Palm, if you're at risk of capping Energy.
3. Breath of Fire if there are multiple targets.
4. Blackout Kick.
5. Tiger Palm with excess energy, making sure to leave 40 for when Keg Smash comes off CD.
Defensive Abilities
This will make up the meat of the discussion, as there is a ton of nuance in only a few abilities here. There are several defensive resources important to Brewmasters: Brew Charges (ISB/PB), Health, Ox Orbs, and Stagger. (Energy is the other resource, but that's considered an offensive resource, and is converted into more Brew Charges per above). Each of those resources is important, and should be monitored.
Let's start by talking about Health, as it's likely the most nuanced resource. Obviously, if you run out, you die, but there's so much more going on here. It's actually ideal that you stay somewhat damaged, when you're not in danger. Let’s explore why that’s a safe thing to do, and how it benefits you.
The Brewmaster is especially well suited to staying somewhat damaged, having Stagger to provide constant steady damage, and having Mastery: Elusive Brawler to ensure that it's highly unlikely that you'll take a string of multiple non-avoided attacks in a row. Mastery is not just plain dodge, it's key to recognize the difference; it acts as a fairly reliable form of dodge, when you need it (and not when you don't).
Now for the benefits of staying damaged. Presumably, if you're in much danger as a Brewmaster, you're likely in group content, and are getting some external healing. Consider what form that healing takes. It varies based on the spec of healer(s) with you, but a safe assumption is that there is a mixture of steady healing (such as HoTs) and large direct heals (such as Flash of Light). Healer mana matters in Legion (and we want to make sure that spending mana on tanks is an important part of that), so minimizing how much healing you need is important. If you stay at full health most of the time, and occasionally spike low, that wastes most of the steady healing (HoTs), making them mostly overheal. By staying damaged, the HoTs can do their job.
Secondly, Gift of the Ox provides you with healing spheres, but it procs more often the lower health you are. That means two things: First, it reinforces that you want to let yourself get damaged. Second, it means that you shouldn't pick up the healing spheres when you don't need them, as their healing will reduce the chance of more dropping until you take more damage. Thus, the best way to use Gift of the Ox is to only use them when you get dangerously low on health. That will ensure there is a significant number of them, ready to go whenever you do need them. Also, it's worth noting that the fact that they drop at your left and right (alternating) matters, as it means you can choose to collect only half of them at once, as one side's pile will likely be enough to keep you going; no need to grab both sides if you don't need to.
That brings us to the primary way that you manage your health: Ironskin Brew and Purifying Brew, which share charges. They work best when combined; using a healthy mixture of both is nearly always superior to heavily favoring one or the other. Ironskin Brew provides damage smoothing and increases the effectiveness of Purifying Brew, but does not reduce healing needed. Complimenting that, Purifying Brew removes Staggered damage, but only does much if you've recently used Ironskin Brew.
Ironskin Brew's damage smoothing is element that should dictate when you use it. The above discussion of health showed how beneficial it is to stay in a damaged state, but you also don't want to risk dying. Use ISB when there is risk of dying in the next couple seconds. Mastery will help with that significantly, making it reliable for you to not take a string of several unavoided hits in a row; trust in it. It can be a scary wave to ride, but trust in your toolset to keep you alive, even if you're not at full health. Save ISB for incoming telegraphed spike damage from your enemies, and when you get down to half health (or whatever point you risk dying to a couple more hits). Accept that you're only going to have ISB up some of the time (half of the time is a good starting estimate), and focus on making those ISBs count, covering the most incoming damage, and points when you are most at risk. Don't waste brew charges on ISB when you’re at high health.
If you’re Ironskinning well, you’ll be building up a significant but not overpowering Stagger level. Pay attention to the Stagger bar on your unit frame, and use Purifying Brew to manage it. You have a limited number of Purifying Brews, so you want to maximize how much damage you remove from the picture with each one. Watch for your Stagger to spike up after you take burst damage (which you had Ironskin Brew up for); that’s a good time to Purify, thereby negating a massive chunk of that burst damage. Note that the Stagger bar is equivalent scale to your health bar; seeing a half full Stagger bar means you’re going to take half your health in Stagger damage. It also means that Purifying when you’re at 2/3 Stagger is going to negate a whopping 1/3 of your healthbar in damage; that’s extremely strong compared to other tank rotational heals/absorbs in Legion. One caveat to this is that if you’re at nearly full health, even if you have a large Stagger built up, save your Purifying for later; it would just turn the HoTs on you into overhealing.
Here’s a TLDR summary of how to best use these abilities:
1. If you’re at full or near full (>80%ish) health, save your brew charges, don’t use any. Obviously, use one on the pull since it’d just be wasted otherwise, but that’s it. Don’t pick up Gift of the Ox healing spheres.
2. If you’re damaged, but not in danger (probably 40-80% health, depending on the content), you’re in the sweet spot. Try to err as low as you can feel comfortable here. Use an Ironskin here or there, but don’t try to maintain it. Keep a spare brew charge or two in reserve for when you get dangerously low. Purify if you get over 40-50% Stagger. Still don’t pick up the healing spheres (some will expire and heal you automatically, that’s fine).
3. When you’re dangerously damaged (30-50%), don’t panic. Hit Ironskin for sure. Grab some healing spheres. If still dangerously low, grab the others and keep grabbing them as they spawn (which should be happening fairly frequently). Use Purify with a bit lower priority here; only Purify if you’re over 50-60% Stagger.
4. If you’re even lower than that, now it’s time to start panicking. Use Fortifying Brew if you run out of Ironskins. Keep gobbling up the healing spheres. If things are really dire, Roll away from the mobs to buy a few more seconds.
Conclusion
In summary, don’t panic. Let your health get moderately low. Maximize the effects of all your tools. Mix Ironskin and Purifying Brew fairly evenly. Don’t try to keep Ironskin up the whole time; only use it when you’re in already damaged. Have fun!
Hope this helped. Feedback about how this feels to play would be great, and what parts of this didn’t seem intuitive or confusing. Thanks!
You're not listening, Gift of the Ox is not acceptable reactive healing ability as we are not able to activate it via movement during most boss encounters.
Jerking left and right to pickup orbs only serves to put the target (boss) out of positioning and pissing off all of your DPS. Name one other tank class that has this issue, it's solely unique to BrM and if this is your only response to the issue i feel sorry for the community moving forward.
It is not necessary to move the boss to pick up Gift of the Ox healing spheres. ANY movement in the right direction will pick them up. If you're moving the boss, you're moving too far.
And yes, I've seen bugs in Legion in a few places where they can't be picked up; we'll get those fixed.
By the way, nothing has changed about their placement from live, for the conspiracy theorists.
Why would you pick a tank that has to gamble and risk that much with his health on progression over any other tank that does not have to do that?
Every tank gambles with their life when tanking. Brewmasters do it in a different way. By having so much control over their survival, it's in their hands to play to their situation and healers.
From a healer perspective that is not a very fun tank to have in a group. I am a healer, I want to heal people not stand around and wait to see if the tank is going to pick up some orbs or not. And if they don't pick up some orbs than it is probably too late to do anything so I have to heal them regardless.
From a healer perspective, you should keep healing, but know that there's an implicit Deep Healing mechanic on Brewmasters. They still need your healing, it's just not quite as dire for them to be at medium health as it might be for other tanks.
I'd add that we know full well that this sort of design would not work in the live Warlords world, where spikiness is the only threat to tanks, and if you're not at full health, you're about to die.
That is not the Legion world. Legion is very different. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Protection Paladin Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
We think Prot Paladins are in a decent place, but have a few changes planned to their rotation to make things a little more balanced as far as the significance of each ability:
Judgment: Instead of Judgment crits granting a Shield of the Righteous charge, Judgment will reduce the remaining cooldown of Shield of the Righteous by 2sec, or 4sec on crits.
Avenger's Shield: No longer buffs your next Shield of the Righteous.
Consecration: Additionally, Shield of the Righteous is 20% stronger while in your Consecration. (Would dynamically update as you move in/out of the Consecration).
Hammer of the Righteous: 4.5sec recharge
Blessed Hammer: 4.5sec recharge, and increase to 3 max charges.
Guardian's Light: Removed.
Knight Templar: Moved to Guardian's Light's spot.
Seraphim: Returned, in Knight Templar's spot. Same duration/cooldown, but costs 2 Shield of the Righteous charges, instead of 5 Holy Power.
Tuning: Significant tuning improvements. Overall, Protection Paladin damage is extremely low right now, and is being massively increased. On top of that, there are several talent rows where the tuning is extremely off, such as Blessed Hammer dominating its row, which we'll solve (mostly by buffing Hammer of the Righteous).
Keep the feedback coming! Thanks! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Holy Priest Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
T'uure should be fixed next build to correctly use your spellpower, and to correctly proc from Heal and HW:Sanctify. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Elemental Shaman Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
To elaborate on the Power of the Maelstrom and Stormkeeper changes--one thing not obvious from the tooltips is that Power of the Maelstrom should proc much more often than before. All in all, this build should give a slight net increase to the amount of "free" PotM overloads you get, but spreading them into more frequent procs so that trying to align PotM with Stormkeeper isn't a total feast-or-famine situation; it should be more practical to do regularly if you try to. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Affliction Warlock Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
I am curious if we can get a response as to what happened to the shard proc rate, so that simcraft can be fixed.
This sort of thing is good for http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743504316, but, Agony on Soul Effigy will give shards 25% as often as any other Agony. The mechanics are complicated due to Agony's variable proc rate and you can ask for more detail there if you want, but what I just said is accurate for modeling purposes. You'll have 1.25x as many shards per unit time from Agony if you cast it on an Effigy in addition to a normal target. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Arms Warrior Feedback -- Build 21570 -- 27-Apr
I don't want to sound like an alarmist/crybaby/etc, or start a conversation on how much XYZ hates us, or any else of the sort, but at this point we've been posting the same feedback for weeks with no changes
We've heard the feedback, and are happy with how Arms (and Fury) are playing right now, with yet-to-come tuning in mind. Talents make up a huge part of that, and we're seeing them satisfy their role quite well. Upcoming changes to Arms/Fury will be primarily tuning. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Blizzcon Party - Con Before the Storm
AskMrRobot and friends are back again with a Kickstarter for a Blizzcon party. Last year over 4,000 people stopped by to take a look at the art, enjoy some drinks, and meet other Blizzard fans.
Final Boss - Frost Death Knight Spec Preview
Final Boss is back with a second round of spec previews.