World of Warcraft: Legion (7.3.5 edition)

Anyone else get into the last waves of invites?

I am. I'm not especially looking forward to repeating all of it on the same class... mind you... but I'm definitely going to be playing day 1... assuming the servers stay up.

There is a LOT to do.

World Quests being ripped out of Diablo 3 was a great idea. You can target specific things you need with them, which is also handy. In need of Order Hall resources? There are quests with that as a reward. Need some artifact power? You always need artifact power. Plenty of quests with that around too. Got some extra resources laying around? There's probably a quest for that too.

Prefer dungeons to raids? Scaling systems for dungeons look pretty good. At their most basic, the dungeons are fun and still provide some challenge until you reach the inevitable gear over scaling it. The only issue here is while you're working your way to entry for heroics, normal random queues will almost entirely be the 4 end of zone dungeons for the main story campaign... so don't expect to hit the others all that often unless you queue specifically for those or until you hit Heroic.

Thanks to the class trial system coming with the pre-expansion patch, you can even test out different classes at a high level.

I'd say it's shaping up to be a good expansion. Perhaps not quite as alt friendly as previous expansions, at least to start... your artifact trait unlocks do make a decent difference in your power level and past like 8 unlocks, the cost of each subsequent unlock gets higher and higher quite quickly. But, as a divorcee who is trying to live cheap for some dental saving... I could see having quite a bit of fun with this long term.

A

Got in the beta. Played through the DH opening and the DK artifact quest. Blood DK's missing a few buttons now(especially IBF), but rotation-wise, it felt pretty good. Switching the main ranged ability from deathcoil to the blood version of icy touch is also... eh.

Since multistrike is getting removed, has Blizzard said what they're switching the stat to? My current DK's basically all MS and haste/mastery, so I'm going to be stacked somewhere... I'd just like to know where...

cube wrote:

Got in the beta. Played through the DH opening and the DK artifact quest. Blood DK's missing a few buttons now(especially IBF), but rotation-wise, it felt pretty good.

Since multistrike is getting removed, has Blizzard said what they're switching the stat to? My current DK's basically all MS and haste/mastery, so I'm going to be stacked somewhere... I'd just like to know where...

All 3 specs for DK have less buttons now which is kinda cool.

cube wrote:

Got in the beta. Played through the DH opening and the DK artifact quest. Blood DK's missing a few buttons now(especially IBF), but rotation-wise, it felt pretty good. Switching the main ranged ability from deathcoil to the blood version of icy touch is also... eh.

Since multistrike is getting removed, has Blizzard said what they're switching the stat to? My current DK's basically all MS and haste/mastery, so I'm going to be stacked somewhere... I'd just like to know where...

Seems to vary. Some of my stuff went to Versatility, others went to Crit, others went to Haste.

Just so I understand this correctly regarding PVP in WoW when the Legion expansion or patch 7 hits. They are changing it up so that skill is more important than gear now? Much less emphasis is put on gear and the points you get off of that high tier gear compared to lower tier?

whispa wrote:

Just so I understand this correctly regarding PVP in WoW when the Legion expansion or patch 7 hits. They are changing it up so that skill is more important than gear now? Much less emphasis is put on gear and the points you get off of that high tier gear compared to lower tier?

Gear is still important, but the path to the higher tier isnt so large.

Additionally for gear all that matters is the ilvl. The stats on it are irrelevant, but for every X ilvls you are above the "base", you get a 1% increase to the stats they've decided your spec should have as a baseline. I don't think there's any more meaningful distinction between PvE and PvP gear as well.

I'm looking forward to it, since I'm a sometimes PvP-er, and this way I won't just immediately get rofl-stomped.

That's great news for pvp casuals like myself! Thanks!

Just wish the queus were more active in beta. I've yet to get into a match, but the ones on the PTR are constantly going.

Thanks Demos, it does sound like it has enough kick to bring me back for a bit. I enjoyed warlords for a good couple months, maybe that's my new normal: Play a bit, hit max level and then move on. Raiding and min/maxing don't have that much allure for me anymore.

One word:

Gnome hunters

Garrcia wrote:

One word:

Gnome hunters

When can I play a gnome hunter named Vege'tar'ian?(vegetarian = elvish for bad hunter?)

Garrcia wrote:

One word:

Gnome hunters

Yay, we finally get to hunt gnomes!

Demosthenes wrote:

I am. I'm not especially looking forward to repeating all of it on the same class... mind you... but I'm definitely going to be playing day 1... assuming the servers stay up.

There is a LOT to do.

World Quests being ripped out of Diablo 3 was a great idea. You can target specific things you need with them, which is also handy. In need of Order Hall resources? There are quests with that as a reward. Need some artifact power? You always need artifact power. Plenty of quests with that around too. Got some extra resources laying around? There's probably a quest for that too.

Prefer dungeons to raids? Scaling systems for dungeons look pretty good. At their most basic, the dungeons are fun and still provide some challenge until you reach the inevitable gear over scaling it. The only issue here is while you're working your way to entry for heroics, normal random queues will almost entirely be the 4 end of zone dungeons for the main story campaign... so don't expect to hit the others all that often unless you queue specifically for those or until you hit Heroic.

Thanks to the class trial system coming with the pre-expansion patch, you can even test out different classes at a high level.

I'd say it's shaping up to be a good expansion. Perhaps not quite as alt friendly as previous expansions, at least to start... your artifact trait unlocks do make a decent difference in your power level and past like 8 unlocks, the cost of each subsequent unlock gets higher and higher quite quickly. But, as a divorcee who is trying to live cheap for some dental saving... I could see having quite a bit of fun with this long term.

A

Thanks for the report, Demos.

I think what you said about this being less alt-friendly than normal rings true because of the artifact. Which is OK by me. In Warlords, I ended up leveling all of my toons to 100, and there's still a ton of stuff I want to do with my main, and most of my alts are badly geared and ignored.

On the plus side, I've got gold coming out of my ears, and I'm well stocked to sell bags when the expansion hits.

Question: Do you have any idea how the artifact works for different specs? In other words, if I'm building my ret paladin artifact (Ashbringer, squee!), does that lock me out of creating an artifact for a holy spec? If not, do I have to build them up separately, or do the artifact traits swap out when I change specs?

So, the traits are on the item itself. Any artifact power spent on one is NOT reflected on the others. This is where choice comes in. If you're going purely DPS, then it makes sense to dump everything into Ashbringer, but if you're also going to be playing Holy and Protection regularly, then you'll want to be splitting up the AP as you can.

So, having split my time in Beta between Enhancement and Restoration, my Doomhammer has 8 points unlocked and my Scepter of the Tides has 6.

That said, AP generation is upgraded by Artifact Knowledge, which is a researched thing in your Order Hall. It's daily on the server right now, but my understanding is that it will start at like a week to research? Something like that. Anyway, for each research you finish, you gain 50% more Artifact Power from all non-story/quest sources (so quest items don't count for the boost, World Treasure pickups don't count, etc...). But, all AP items you pick up from like random drops in the world, from bosses, from dungeon dailies, world quests, etc... all get upgraded so your 200 AP item becomes 300 AP item for the first research, for the second research, it would be a 400 AP item, etc... each upgrade is 50% more gain from each item.

So, if you are doing two artifacts concurrently (a real possibility for DPS only classes) it'll be a bit slower than putting everything into one... but with the ramp up in cost for each trait purchased, it'll still not be like double perks picked up. (So, for example, the last trait purchased's cost is equivalent to a full third of an un-touched artifact's perks.)

Demosthenes wrote:

So, the traits are on the item itself. Any artifact power spent on one is NOT reflected on the others. This is where choice comes in. If you're going purely DPS, then it makes sense to dump everything into Ashbringer, but if you're also going to be playing Holy and Protection regularly, then you'll want to be splitting up the AP as you can.

So, having split my time in Beta between Enhancement and Restoration, my Doomhammer has 8 points unlocked and my Scepter of the Tides has 6.

That said, AP generation is upgraded by Artifact Knowledge, which is a researched thing in your Order Hall. It's daily on the server right now, but my understanding is that it will start at like a week to research? Something like that. Anyway, for each research you finish, you gain 50% more Artifact Power from all non-story/quest sources (so quest items don't count for the boost, World Treasure pickups don't count, etc...). But, all AP items you pick up from like random drops in the world, from bosses, from dungeon dailies, world quests, etc... all get upgraded so your 200 AP item becomes 300 AP item for the first research, for the second research, it would be a 400 AP item, etc... each upgrade is 50% more gain from each item.

So, if you are doing two artifacts concurrently (a real possibility for DPS only classes) it'll be a bit slower than putting everything into one... but with the ramp up in cost for each trait purchased, it'll still not be like double perks picked up. (So, for example, the last trait purchased's cost is equivalent to a full third of an un-touched artifact's perks.)

Thanks for this explanation. I'm a little confused though...is it possible to eventually have two fully upgraded artifact weapons one 1 character?

mindset.threat wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

So, the traits are on the item itself. Any artifact power spent on one is NOT reflected on the others. This is where choice comes in. If you're going purely DPS, then it makes sense to dump everything into Ashbringer, but if you're also going to be playing Holy and Protection regularly, then you'll want to be splitting up the AP as you can.

So, having split my time in Beta between Enhancement and Restoration, my Doomhammer has 8 points unlocked and my Scepter of the Tides has 6.

That said, AP generation is upgraded by Artifact Knowledge, which is a researched thing in your Order Hall. It's daily on the server right now, but my understanding is that it will start at like a week to research? Something like that. Anyway, for each research you finish, you gain 50% more Artifact Power from all non-story/quest sources (so quest items don't count for the boost, World Treasure pickups don't count, etc...). But, all AP items you pick up from like random drops in the world, from bosses, from dungeon dailies, world quests, etc... all get upgraded so your 200 AP item becomes 300 AP item for the first research, for the second research, it would be a 400 AP item, etc... each upgrade is 50% more gain from each item.

So, if you are doing two artifacts concurrently (a real possibility for DPS only classes) it'll be a bit slower than putting everything into one... but with the ramp up in cost for each trait purchased, it'll still not be like double perks picked up. (So, for example, the last trait purchased's cost is equivalent to a full third of an un-touched artifact's perks.)

Thanks for this explanation. I'm a little confused though...is it possible to eventually have two fully upgraded artifact weapons one 1 character?

Depends on what you mean by "fully upgraded". Recently they added an end-game progression system to the artifacts. Basically, once you have all of the traits (including the three big ones) unlocked, a fourth big one will unlock. This one is simply a damage increase for DPSers, a healing increase for healers and a flat increase to some survivability stat for tanks (depends on the tank, like Paladin gets armor, Death Knight gets health, etc...).

Given that the first of those (what I was talking about above) will cost about the same as 1/3 of another artifact weapon being upgraded, I suspect we likely won't see that until near end game, except for those "dedicated few" who have the time and energy to grind THAT much (and even that will take a LONG time, though the artifact research will help there too).

For reference, my Shaman hit 110 with about 4ish points spent on two artifacts (so 4 on one, 4 on the other)... but since then, I've unlocked about 5ish each... but it's also ramping up where it would take a good focused night for my next trait on either (but not both).

I suspect it'll be more than possible to get those first weapons fully unlocked to that "paragoning" system by the mid point of the first raid tier. What you do then will largely vary. I could see getting that first paragon point, as it is a 5% increase before the next one becomes .5%, then finishing up unlocking the base talents on the other two for role diversity as needed for raiding before then focusing on one to paragon.

mindset.threat wrote:

Thanks for this explanation. I'm a little confused though...is it possible to eventually have two fully upgraded artifact weapons one 1 character?

Demon, I think what he's asking (and what I'm not sure about either) is whether you can have multiple artifact weapons for multiple specs. Or do you get one artifact that changes stats (or traits or whatever) when you switch specs, sort of like armor does now?

Demosthenes wrote:

So, the traits are on the item itself. Any artifact power spent on one is NOT reflected on the others. This is where choice comes in. If you're going purely DPS, then it makes sense to dump everything into Ashbringer, but if you're also going to be playing Holy and Protection regularly, then you'll want to be splitting up the AP as you can.

And now that I look at this paragraph ... it sounds like you can have multiple artifacts. Also, it seems like Artifact Power (aka AP, which ain't Armor Pen) is earned by character like other currency and spent however?

Feel free to tell me to figure it out my own damn self! Stuff like this always seems weird in beta but makes perfect sense once the game goes live.

So yeah, you have a different weapon for each spec on a character. So my shaman has three, the Doomhammer for Enhancement, the Scepter of Tides for Elemental, and the Fist of Ra'den for Elemental. At level 102 you get the quests to get the artifact weapons for the other specs you didn't pick the first time at level 100.

So you have several artifact weapons on a single character unless you just choose not to pursue them (like if you're not interested in anything but healing, so you only ever grab the healing one).

Artifact power as a currency is a good way to think of it. But rather than the currency being character wide, it is applied directly to the artifact you have equipped when you use the item that has that AP. It's then spent like a currency on the artifact it's applied to when you go to your Order Hall's weapon forge.

So, for example, my Doomhammer has like 7 traits purchased and has an active total of 6,000 artifact power sitting on it unspent. My Scepter of tides has 6 traits purchased and a total of 5000 something artifact power sitting on it. Meanwhile, my Fist of Ra'den has on the first trait purchased (automatic when you get it), and that's it and basically 0 artifact power because I've just never done anything with it.

I'm really struggling with this beta, it all feels so old. I was fully on board with getting a 3 month sub in August, but i'm really not sure now.

So, any experience with the demon hunter, or does anyone have information on them? Haven't heard or read too much on them. The idea sounds interesting, but is it going to just be a hybrid of two other classes?

Rainsmercy wrote:

So, any experience with the demon hunter, or does anyone have information on them? Haven't heard or read too much on them. The idea sounds interesting, but is it going to just be a hybrid of two other classes?

Basically, yes, it's exactly that. DPS is really slow. REALLY slow. But, thanks to being GCD locked, it feels somewhat fast. The problem being, you basically have 2 buttons as part of your normal attack cycle and some "hit off cooldown" attacks to supplement that. It kind of reminds me of the currently WoD Marksman Hunter in a way. Build with one attack, spend excess with another, but you're primarily going for floating your resource (fury) for Eye Beams (and that crazy blade dance thing with 2 or 3+ mobs).

Talents do supplement that, and I haven't maxed out my Demon Hunter, so it's possible that it plays better at higher levels (their talents ranged from 98 to 110 rather than being done at 100), but from the starting experience? I'm not a fan. The only talent I see being interesting is one in the third tier that offers more predictable Fury generation (as your builder gives 20-30 still, for some reason). It hits harder than your normal builder and gives more Fury... and its cooldown can be reset by your regular spender. Think Devastate and Shield Slam from Protection Warriors.

That said, Demon Hunters are a RIDICULOUS class for farming stuff. I can totally see playing this character as a skinner/herbalist for my main crafting needs. Eye beam MELTS mobs like nothing else in the open world. Like regular mobs will lose 1/3 to 1/2 of their health to an eyebeam and there is no target limit to that. Toss in the soul fragment for every mob you kill and it just gets into some crazy survivability.

Thanks again Demos.

dibs wrote:

I'm really struggling with this beta, it all feels so old. I was fully on board with getting a 3 month sub in August, but i'm really not sure now.

This is how I feel. A few months back I was fully on board...but now that I've messed around with PTR and read up on the druid/shaman/priest beta feedback I'm not so sure. From a PvP perspective there seems to be a lot of cosmetic changes but the underlying issues are still present or in some cases even worse.

I'm actually considering going back to GW2 for my PvP fix since I haven't pre purchased Legion yet.

Demosthenes wrote:

So yeah, you have a different weapon for each spec on a character ....

Awesome, Demos, thanks for the explanation. I think I get it.

The good news is, there are a ton of items being converted to toys, which will free up bag space for all of your fancy new weapons. If anyone on Blackhand-A needs some of those engineering toys, hit me up in game.

mindset.threat wrote:

From a PvP perspective there seems to be a lot of cosmetic changes but the underlying issues are still present or in some cases even worse.

such as?

So for Transmog, if I get a bow as a rogue, would it be available for my hunter to transmog the model if items are account wide?

whispa wrote:

So for Transmog, if I get a bow as a rogue, would it be available for my hunter to transmog the model if items are account wide?

If you can't equip it on the character it drops on, you can't xmog it on another character that can use it.

I can't wait for the new transmog system. The old system was pretty clunky and I kept WAY too many things in the hope that someday I would transmog into it.

Demosthenes wrote:
whispa wrote:

So for Transmog, if I get a bow as a rogue, would it be available for my hunter to transmog the model if items are account wide?

If you can't equip it on the character it drops on, you can't xmog it on another character that can use it.

Thanks