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Warlords of Draenor: Major balance druid changes on the way
I have two druids, one Alliance, one Horde -- in fact, the Alliance druid was the first character I ever made. That said, while I initially tried my hand at healing with my first druid, these days, I usually just use the characters for farming purposes. Let's face it, there's nothing better than flight form for nabbing pesky herbs or mining nodes. I will, however, occasionally run a dungeon or a scenario -- and when I do, I'm in cat form. It's the default choice as far as I'm concerned, and I do enough damage to get by, although nobody in their right mind could claim I have more than a bare, passing knowledge of the spec. But I never could get into playing a balance druid. At first it was the fact that I began playing a druid before balance druids were even something remotely feasible to play. Then I was drawn to other classes, and by the time I got back to the druid, balance looked like a complicated impossibility to learn. Apparently I was not alone in this assessment, as balance druids are headed for some massive changes according to the latest iteration of patch notes from the Warlords of Draenor alpha.
Warlords of Draenor: New flavor items, weapons, and armor
Our fellows over at Wowhead have posted the datamined details of Warlords of Draenor's latest build, including a number of intriguing items from Ashran, WoD's new world PvP zone. The quest items, doubtlessly linked to killing members of the opposite faction, are particularly fun. Thanks to the Tauren Hoof, you can enjoy your favorite gelatin-based chewy candies, or collect and grind Draenei Tails to help spice up your love life. You know, if you don't mind some mindless slaughter (and this is Warcraft, so of course we don't!). Other new faction quest items include the Severed Night Elf Head, Worgen Snout, and Forsaken Brains. Even more interesting than these are the epic-quality PvP weapons pulled from the latest build. Not many are listed so far; just a priest staff (Nozaro, Staff of the Heavens), and a paladin mace (Rowyn, the Jailer's Gavel). Both weapons are only usable in Ashran, and will disappear upon leaving the isle. Both of them also have really cool abilities. The priest staff will levitate you high in the air for 30 seconds, out of enemy range, and the paladin mace will teleport an enemy player to your faction's prison. How neat is that? These can't possibly be the only Ashran weapons; certainly there will be at least one for each class. I wonder--what kind of effects will they all have? As if the weapons weren't enough, a single piece of armor pulled from the patch invites rampant speculation about the nature of gear we might see in Warlords. That would be the mail hunter boots, the Simplyswift Treads, which removes the cooldown from Disengage. If this effect makes it to live, it could mean huge things for class gear in the upcoming expansion. What other abilities may we see modified in such a way? If you were designing a piece of gear like this for your own class, what would it be? There are so many possibilities!
Wowhead interviews Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas
Warlords of Draenor is bringing some big changes to the table -- and Wowhead recently interviewed Lead Game Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas about many of the changes we'll be seeing in regards to raiding, valor, and more. Item upgrades will be going away entirely, and with them, the valor point system seems to be attracting a shift in purpose, although that shift hasn't quite been decided just yet. However, the incentive mentioned during last year's BlizzCon that rewarded players with extra valor for grouping is undergoing a revamp, as valor currently isn't as useful as it has been in the past. Also interesting to note are the design changes for gear rewards. For the past several expansions, gear obtained from varying levels of difficulty in raids has always been the same model, simply different colors. In Warlords, this will be changed to be similar to what we saw in Burning Crusade -- PvP and PvE gear will share similar models, and the color shift will denote whether the armor was obtained in PvE, or PvP. Raid gear will go back to having different artwork, depending on the difficulty of the content completed -- so players that have defeated the most difficult content will have the snazzy gear to show for it. While Garrisons are going to be a huge piece of playable content, Hazzikostas pointed out that the feature is in no way mandatory -- the feature is not meant to feel like dailies in any way, and there won't be any sense of obligation to work on them on a daily basis. For those that have waded their way through the daily system introduced in Mists, that should be a relief to hear. Check out the full interview above for more from Hazzikostas -- and keep an eye on Wowhead for a full transcript of the interview soon.
Warlords of Draenor Alpha Patch notes for April 17
A new round of updates have been released for the alpha client of Warlords of Draenor. Included in the patch notes are new sections covering changes and adjustments with Itemization, Movement Speed, Raid Utility Balance, Reforging, and Combat Resurrection. There have also been updates to existing sections as well - many class sections have received a lot of updates and adjustments, as expected for such an early build. Haste % and Crit % bonuses have been streamlined -- no more spell/melee/ranged, it's a universal Haste and Crit % bonus for all. Druids, rejoice -- Ravage no longer requires you to be behind the target. Many glyphs have been removed, and a lot of new glyphs have been added, with some glyphs now being exclusive to a specialization. Movement speed enchants now increase Movement Speed by 10% -- up from 8%. Hunters, there has been a comprehensive sweep over pet abilities -- it's a major list! Paladins, there have been some major tweaks to both Holy and Protection specs. For the full list of updates, check out the official Battle.net site for all the details. New updates are denoted in red for easy reading.
Warlords of Draenor: New garrison screenshots from PAX East
Hunter site Eyes of the Beast attended PAX East this weekend, and uploaded some images from the press kit. Included in the screenshots are an impressive shot of what appears to be the Spires of Arak, a shot of Frostfire Ridge, another shot of the gorgeous scenery in Shadowmoon Valley, and of course, garrisons. The garrison screenshots in particular are interesting because it looks like this is a garrison at or very near completion -- giving a much clearer look at just what these things will look like when we get to set them up ourselves. Of course, the buildings displayed are all Alliance structures -- we haven't really seen any fully realized previews of Horde settlements just yet. The Alliance architecture seems to blend in with Draenor's lush landscape remarkably well. I'm hoping that the Horde buildings won't stick out like a sore thumb in comparison -- but we'll have to wait to see what the Horde structures look like, for now. Check out the full post on Eyes of the Beast for all the images.
Warlords of Draenor: Garrisons much more than player housing
Garrisons seem to be shaping up to be the centerpiece of Warlords content -- not in the sometimes soul-crushing manner of the daily quest grind in Mists, but as an entertaining and engaging diversion for players to do at max level in between dungeons, raids, scenarios, and whatever else happens to pop up. We have yet to get a proper introduction to the feature, but we've been told and shown in glimpses here and there that it's going to be big. Much, much bigger than our farms. Wowhead has been busily datamining everything under the sun from the Warlords alpha client, and some of that information directly involves the new feature. While there's not a clear picture of how exactly garrisons are going to work, the datamining does point out some fascinating details and perks. It's become incredibly clear that while garrisons have been referred to as WoW's version of player housing, in fact they're likely going to be much, much more than that.
Breakfast Topic: Talented
With the release of the first set of patch 6.0 patch notes--I'm certain there will be many variants to come--talk is buzzing about all the major changes and adjustments we'll be seeing come Warlords of Draenor. In addition to reading about all this, I've been doing some perusal of the level 100 talents (as they currently stand). In particular, I think all three of the new feral druid talents sound great, though Lunar Inspiration is my favorite just for concept alone. The restoration druid options aren't quite as exciting, in my opinion, though they certainly aren't anything to sneer at. The other classes I play regularly are my frost mage and my retribution paladin, and a few of their talents strike my fancy as well--Comet Storm for the mage and Empowered Seals for the paladin in particular sound fun and useful, respectively. Have you looked over the talents in detail? Some haven't changed much since BlizzCon, but some haven't been documented publicly until now. What do you like? What don't you like? What do you wish were there?
Warlords of Draenor: Garrison to have its own fishing hole
Cory Stockton has teased us yet again with news on the upcoming Garrisons for Warlords of Draenor. This time, he's working on fishing. @MatthewWRossi Alliance and Horde both have fishing spots built in. Planning to let players unlock a fishing building as well. - Mumper (@mumper) April 3, 2014 What is becoming ever more clear with each successive tweet (many of which we've covered) is that the Garrison is more expansive and a lot more content than anything like the Farm we've gotten before. Cory confirmed this in a followup tweet, promising some new blogs on the feature and what to expect from it in the near future. Honestly, I'm starting to get the sense that I need to pay a lot more attention to the Garrison and that it's going to be a big new part of how we play WoW in this expansion. We've seen that they'll have portals to major cities, be a place where you can display achievements, work on professions, there's a follower style minigame planned, pets and mounts displayed via stables, and I find myself wondering just how big the Garrison is intended to be. Very interested in those promised blogs.
Warlords of Draenor: Patch 6.0 patch notes
The patch notes for patch 6.0 have been released! Patch 6.0 is the pre-patch for Warlords of Draenor, featuring many of the changes and adjustments we'll be seeing in preparation for the next expansion's launch. Please note that patch notes can and often will change over time -- these should by no means be considered a finalized version. Highlights from the patch notes include: A new row of talents has been added for level 100, and Draenor Perks from levels 91-99. Racial traits have been rebalanced. All characters now learn a few important Major Glyphs as they level up. Garrisons, garrisons, garrisons! Read on for the full list of patch notes after the break.
Dread Raven, Dread Hatchling live with Warlords preorders
Preorders for Warlords of Draenor are now live, as well as the level 90 boost feature. And for those that pre-purchase the Digital Deluxe version of the expansion, you'll have your Dread Raven mount and Dread Hatchling pet waiting for you in your inbox. The mount is a flying, armored and far more ornate version of the Raven Lord mount from Sethekk Halls, and the pet is a baby version of the two. If the hatchling weren't adorable enough on its own, try summoning your Dread Raven while the hatchling is out and you'll see just how much the little guy adores its horrific armored death machine of a momma. And there's an Easter Egg for those with the Raven Lord mount -- summoning the Raven Lord will also warrant a happy reaction from the little guy. But just because he's adorable doesn't mean the hatchling doesn't pack a punch in Pet Battles -- check out Warcraft Pets for more information on the hatchling and its attacks, and take a look at the gallery below for more screenshots of both pet and mount in action. Update: Heads up for pet collectors -- the Dread Hatchling can be caged and sold on the Auction House, or traded to other players.
Dev Watercooler: Building Healthy Gameplay
Following last week's blog on the stat squish and CC removal, this morning's offering is a Dev Watercooler on the changes to healing coming with Warlords of Draenor. As ever, the full post is after the break, but let's look at the key summary points here: Player health has been increased relative to player damage and healing This means that Resilience and Battle Fatigue can be reduced in PvP The raw throughput of healers relative to player health has been reduced The aim is for more "triage" healing Burst damage and burst healing are lower. These changes are being taken into account in raid encounter design The healing of "smart heals" is being reduced Mana efficiency of multi-target heals is being reduced Low-throughput, low-mana-cost heals like Nourish, Holy Light, Heal, and Healing Wave, are being removed because they think that while they do add complexity, they don't truly add depth to healing gameplay. There are clearly some huge changes. Hit the break for the full post.
Warlords of Draenor: New instance technology, no load screen in new PvP island
Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been teasing us with tidbits of information about Ashran, Warlords of Draenor's new PvP island, for some time now, both on Twitter and in interviews on the recent press tour. And now another little piece of intel that has wider-reaching ramifications than PvP alone. @Joeygiggles3 It will use some new tech. It is instanced but you won't feel the transition (no load screen). - Holinka (@holinka) March 6, 2014 This sounds excellent, firstly, for Ashran itself. The sense of immediacy, of being in the world and participating in a battle that is on your server, in your realm, will really add something to the experience. The sense of separation in instanced PvP removes something of the immediacy, the feeling that the other faction are invading your territory, that it's your personal server's fight. Not to mention, most people wouldn't be happy to call it world PvP if it was obviously instanced! But, looking at the new technology, it's exciting to consider what options this opens up for Blizzard. It's more than just phasing, it seems, or Holinka would not have referred to new tech. Could we see this used for questing? For scenarios? Dungeons? Raids? For me at least, the opening scenarios for the Isle of Thunder would have felt a lot more authentic if I didn't have to go through a load screen.
Why Proving Ground gating on queued heroics is a good thing
It's certainly been a controversial move. Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas took to the forums recently to clarify some hastily translated interviews he did with fansites during last week's press event. There are several key things in Watcher's post that it seems people are missing, so let's just sum it up here. Proving Ground Silver will be required for solo queue heroic dungeons Group queue heroic dungeons will have no Proving Ground requirement Proving Grounds will be updated to "further refine balance and mechanics" Let's begin at the end. Read that last point, and then read it again for good measure. Yes, Proving Grounds have some issues at the moment, as far as balance goes. A lot of those issues actually relate to how well classes downscale with gear, how dependent they are on certain levels of certain stats. For example, let's look at fire mages. Fire mages scale really well with gear, as do their Arcane brothers and sisters. Take a fire mage and scale it right down to 463, and you'll have a harder time doing a silver Proving Ground than a class that scales down really well. I did a little experiment as part of my research for this article. In an attempt to see how bad getting a Silver could be, I took a fire mage to the proving grounds. Not a new 90, but an unplayed one. My gear was woeful. I managed, with this gear, not at the hit cap, not even at ilvl 463 with downscaling, to reach wave 4 of Silver. Bronze took five tries.
Warlords of Draenor PvP: Everything is awesome!
I was already excited for PvP in Warlords of Draenor. I was already looking forward to the stat squish and the ability squish and the changes to casting while moving and the lowering of CC. Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka has been tweeting about the internal testing in 6.0 environments, and I was already excited. You had me at the squish, Blizzard. You already had me. And now, the latest PvP blog's arrival has basically blown my mind. If you missed it, WoW Insider published a short summary of the key changes. Skirmishes are in, Trial of the Gladiator is out. Spectator invitations are in, for wargames, as well as an API allowing addon creators to build interfaces around the invitations. And all these are really, really exciting changes. Before you accuse me of being overly positive, I've been critical of PvP this expansion, highly critical in places, because I think it's had real problems. And it has -- it's fair to say that Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion of experimentation for PvP, and as is often the case with experiments, some are more successful than others.
Patch 5.4.7: Dread Hatchling now appearing in Pet Journal
The pet experts at Warcraft Pets have discovered that the Dread Hatchling, one of the rewards for the Digital Deluxe or Collector's Edition versions of Warlords of Draenor, is now visible in the Pet Journal for players. Although the pet is not obtainable at this time, you can view all attacks for the pet, which includes two interesting new abilities -- Shadow Talon and Anzu's Blessing. While we don't know exactly how the Dread Hatchling will hold up in Pet Battles just yet, I'm looking forward to adding the little guy to my rotation of pets. As with prior Collector's Edition pets, the Dread Hatchling is a rare, so he should be pretty devastating. Unfortunately, while you can easily view pets that you haven't collected in game, there's no way to check for mounts -- however, Wowhead is showing that the Reins of the Dread Raven have also been added to the game files with 5.4.7 as well. Obviously both pet and mount are not obtainable at the present time, but the fact that both were added in along with everything else in patch 5.4.7 suggests that perhaps pre-orders for Warlords are on the way soon.
Warlords of Draenor: PvP rework brings back Skirmishes, adds Spectator Invites
Blizzard posted a blog today that should make every PvPer really excited. It seems like they have shifted their thinking away from the proposed rework of the ladders and gone to a more inclusive feel, with a nod towards tournament organizers getting an easier ride too. What are the changes? Let's spell it out: Trial of the Gladiator is gone, removed. This is due to concerns about the proposed system. Skirmishes, un-rated arenas which you can solo-queue for or do with friends in 2v2 and 3v3, are in. Skirmishes reward honor and have the chance to award a bag containing gold, more honor, a small amount of conquest points or something else entirely A Spectator Invite system has been added, allowing players to put Wargames together and invite spectators. This is specifically aimed at tournament organizers, but could be a boon for streamers or casual observers in parties with players doing wargames. Tournament gear is in for Wargames only. Why should you be excited? Well, Skirmishes for one. These casual games allow players to try out arena by themselves, another solo-queue option that WoW PvP has sorely needed for some time, since Skirmishes were replaced with Wargames when Cataclysm launched. Not to mention earning honor from them! While many PvPers have allowed themselves to dream about Skirmishes' return, I don't think any of us ever dreamed we could earn honor from them! What's more, the addition of Spectator Invites and Tournament gear makes it far, far easier for would-be tournament organizers to put contests together. We can all hope to see more and more Arena tournaments coming out of the woodwork with these additions!
Warlords of Draenor: Details on the art of garrisons
Senior Art Director Chris Robinson has been keeping us on tenterhooks awaiting the next Artcraft installment, dealing with Garrisons, and it's here! It's a fascinating post, giving way more than just art, an insight into the design process and the "gameplay first" approach the designers have taken. We also hear from Wendy Vetter, the Dungeon Team's lead artist, who walks players through the process of making the new old, and the old new, as they borrow and adapt older textures and assets while still bringing them up to date with the new systems and graphical quality. There's also input from the props team, giving information on the elements they've added into the mix, the storytelling side of design, creating a whole with items and their use. They're the team working on decoration and filling the space in the buildings. It's another great installment in the series and a fascinating read!
More inventory improvements coming after Warlords launch, larger bags in the meantime
For the avid collector, inventory problems have reached critical mass in Mists of Pandaria. The previously announced toy box and heirloom storage will arrive with the launch of Warlords, but many are still wondering what to do with their ever increasing transmog collections. A solution is on the horizon, but it won't arrive until sometime after the expansion's launch. If the already announced inventory improvements aren't enough, there will also be slightly larger bags added in Warlords. These will probably be 30-slot bags, and I would be surprised if there is ever a larger bag than that once the inventory changes are fully implemented. When it comes to what items will qualify as a "toy box" item to be removed from your regular inventory, Blizzard will be adding these on a case-by-case basis and looking for player feedback on the future beta and PTR to help identify items they may have missed. For example, should a trinket such as the Super Simian Sphere be turned into a permanent toy instead of a trinket? What about a popular quest item like Dartol's Rod of Transformation?
Warlords of Draenor's gear system and spirit as a secondary stat
There has been some discussion recently, on Twitter, between Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and several players about some elements of the new gearing system, and how it applies to healers. First up, I feel like, before we get into the specifics, I should quickly wrap up how the new system will work. You won't understand the rest of the article without this knowledge, so let's rattle through it. The new gearing system works as follows: A piece drops. It is plate, mail, cloth or leather. It has crit and haste as secondary stats. Its primary stat will change according to your spec, so if you're a caster it will be intellect, melee DPS could be strength or agility and so on. As you change spec, the primary stat changes with you. The secondary stats (in this example, crit and haste) will not change. There may also be tertiary stats on gear, such as +run speed, or -durability damage.
Breakfast Topic: What are you most looking forward to with your garrison?
At Gamescom 2010, Tom Chilton famously declared that "housing will be introduced to World of Warcraft some time right after 'never'." Funny how things can go from "never" to what we're getting in Warlords of Draenor. To be fair, he was probably referring to the idea of a simple house with no gameplay attached to it. Player housing couldn't happen in WoW until Blizzard worked out what the gameplay aspects would be. Your faction leader will be sending you on a mission to establish a forward base and gather followers for the cause. You could be staking out your plot of land on day one of the expansion. The follower aspect is what I'm most interested in -- collecting them, naming them, leveling them up, and sending them off to do my bidding. You can check out WoW Insider's post about garrisons to learn more about the types of follower missions and a list of the 25 building types (all that's missing is a zoo for hunter pets). What excites you most about this feature? %Poll-85736%
