2016-10-21

Season 8 Tomorrow & Overview, Dev Blog: Engaging Monsters

Heroic Brawl, Arena Stats, Mekkatorque's Workshop - Value Town #92

PTR Patch Notes for October 20

Patch 7.1 on the Background Downloader

Next week's patch is on the background downloader!

Patch 7.1 - Rockspine Basilisk
Rockspine Basilisk is another one of the new mounts added in Patch 7.1. Currently the source of the mount is unknown.

Patch 7.1 Preview: New Adventures in the Broken Isles

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Beyond its new group content (like the new Karazhan Mythic dungeon and the Trial of Valor raid), World of Warcraft Patch 7.1 holds many new adventures to be discovered and undertaken on your own. Here’s a look at an assortment of activities you can enjoy in addition to your return to Karazhan.

Look to Suramar

Your heroic efforts in Suramar will continue in Patch 7.1 with a new series of quests that unlock over a period of nine weeks, ultimately leading you to the very entrance of the Nighthold. You’ll delve into the story of the Nightfallen insurrection against the Nightborne and their Legion allies.

If you follow the quest line to completion, you’ll be much closer to obtaining the wondrous new Arcanist's Manasaber mount.

Look for the quest “Lockdown” to get started.

Helya’s Treachery

The ruler of Helheim is Helya, a deposed val’kyr queen who is determined to thwart the Valarjar in any way she can. Search Dalaran for the new quest, “A Call to Action”, to begin a quest line to discover the depth of Helya’s influence well beyond Tideskorn Harbor.

Your primary goal will be to unlock new Helarjar World Quests. These will then appear for you all across the Broken Isles, so you can help put a stop to Helya's infernal impact.

A New Invasion

The coastline of the Broken Isles is under assault from an invasive, predatory species, and they’re breeding out of control! These new Falcosaurs drop Falcosaur Eggs and Falcosaur Feathers, reagents for new First Aid and Cooking recipes.

Save an Orphaned Falcosaur pet to begin a journey toward understanding these hungry creatures. You might just earn a unique new mount along the way.

Raiding with Leashes IV

Pet Battlers rejoice! The time has finally come to delve into Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, and Icecrown Citadel in search of new rare pets and the chance to do battle with a new Celestial foe!

Pictured here: Stardust (special encounter), Boneshard (Lord Marrowgar), G0-R41-0N Ultratonk (Mimiron), and Creeping Tentacle (Yogg-Saron).

Stardust the celestial bunny won’t come easily. To get your hands on this rapturous rabbit, you’ll have to first obtain all 16 new pets from bosses across three raid dungeons. Only that impressive act will earn you an invitation (in the mail) to take on Algalon and his legendary pets: Comet, Constellatius, and Cosmos. You must then defeat him with a team of your own in glorious battle!

Something, Something, Something, Guard Dog

When he died, the second that Dr. Weavil’s heart stopped, his ultimate plan was put into motion. After adventurers looted his body, a viscous, yellow fluid slowly filled his veins, and jumper cables were implanted to shock him back to . . . life. Was this undeath? Alchemical engineering? No one is quite sure, but it left him sallow-skinned and over four times as evil as before.

What’s worse, he started an internship program.

Return to Alcaz Isle to get to the bottom of Dr. Weavil’s insidious plans, and perhaps you’ll take home a nice souvenir. These include:

Machine Fluid—a consumable that makes a pet or battle pet look oil-coated for 60 minutes.

Drudge Fluid—a consumable that makes a pet or battle pet look sallow for 60 minutes. Ew.

Big Red Ray—a new toy that makes your pet or battle pet look big and red for 15 seconds.

Electrified Key—allows Hunters to activate one of three Arachnodrone mechanical spiders.

The spiders are tameable. You just have to get to them.

Getting there won’t be easy. Dr. Weavil kind of went nuts and covered Alcaz Isle with anti-aircraft artillery (so you can’t fly), proximity mines (so you can’t run in a straight line), and defensive turrets (so you can’t think straight). Make it past those and you’ll still have to overcome his interns: Drudge Gnomes who mindlessly work for the little big guy.

And then there’s Dr. Weavil himself—just waiting for you in his compound, which probably has a guard dog.

It has a guard dog.

For more on World of Warcraft Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan, check out our preview video and the recent Q&A with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas.

FEEDBACK: Trial of Valor (Raid Finder)

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The Trial of Valor raid will be opening very shortly for testing on Raid Finder difficulty, and will remain open through tomorrow. Please use this thread to provide feedback, bug reports, and other relevant commentary.

Patch 7.1 Zoom Slider

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Intended, yes - but maybe not quite in the way you phrased it.

The CVar has changed to cameraDistanceMaxZoomFactor, so the command you will want to use now is "/console cameraDistanceMaxZoomFactor 2.6". This value should also persist now, so you only need to use the command once.

The slider itself was unnecessary, and has been removed. The default value is set to the max, and very, very few people (if anyone?) used it to reduce their maximum zoom distance. The game's zoom distance will now default to the old maximum value of 1.9 unless changed with the above console command.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, though! Appreciate the feedback here.
Can you ask the dev team to do one small test before considering this to go live? Try the Lorlathil daily where you have to gather the nuts. I have to zoom way in to click on them, otherwise the click region is so small, it's frustrating. I'm sure there are other quests that will be similar (catching the squirrels or whatever they are) in hyjal, for instance.

This doesn't affect the amount you can zoom in, only the amount you can zoom out. We did take situations like this into account, but we don't believe players are necessarily reducing their maximum camera view distance for this (rather than just mouse-wheeling to zoom in).

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Patch 7.1 - Honor Talents and Prestige

If you have already prestiged at least once before 7.1 then all of the honor talents will be automatically unlocked once 7.1 goes live.

Source for those who want double confirmation: https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...32170777010176 (Official Forums)

Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Havoc Talents

Bit of an update here - we’re looking into potentially making some changes to a few of Havoc’s talents, to diversify your options a bit and make certain rows feel more like there’s a choice to be made.

No details to share just yet, and these changes won’t make it into Patch 7.1, but we’re working on it. (Official Forums)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Outlaw Rogue and Roll the Bones

Thanks again for your patience here as it does take some time to make sure we go over all the feedback we receive - we've been having a few conversations based on the feedback in this thread and throughout the community, and I wanted to share our thoughts on Roll the Bones, as well as the state of Outlaw overall.

Roll the Bones is a spec-defining ability for Outlaw Rogues, and there’s a lot of depth to the gameplay of reacting to the various buffs that the Bones can provide, as they alter the flow and pace of combat. We’re happy with how it’s played out, and there are very few class mechanics that can rival the excitement of getting that elusive 6-buff at just the right time.

That said, we recognize that that playstyle might not sit well for everyone, which is why we created Slice and Dice as an alternative to opt-out of the Roll the Bones playstyle. Marked for Death and Death From Above take a little more effort to use effectively, and need to give enough of a benefit to reward that effort, but we’re going to take another look at Slice and Dice to make sure it’s living up to expectations. If it isn’t, we’ll look into making some improvements.

Separately from Roll the Bones, we do feel that Outlaw’s DPS has ended up a little lower than we’d like it to be, and are looking into some options to bring it up a bit. We don’t have an ETA just yet on when that might happen, but it’s on our to-do list. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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