Mists of Pandaria Classic 5.5.4 PTR Development Notes

In Development Mists of Pandaria Classic 5.5.4 PTR
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We have updated the PTR ahead of raid testing, which is now underway.

Now Available For Testing

Raid: Siege of Orgrimmar

  • The tensions stoked by Garrosh Hellscream’s arrogance have reached a boiling point with the destruction unleashed upon the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Leaders of the Alliance and Horde lay siege to Hellscream’s capital in order to topple the ruthless Warchief once and for all!
  • Siege of Orgrimmar includes 14 new encounters, starting beneath Mogu’shan Palace in Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

Raid Testing

  • This playtest will start at 10:00 a.m. PDT on Friday, April 24, and will conclude at 8:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, April 27.
  • PTR vendors have been added and now offer Legendary cloaks and Timeless Coins. These vendors are located near the vendors who offer Heroic Siege Gear in each faction’s appropriate shrine.
    • Many glyphs that have been previously unavailable prior to 5.5.4 are now available for testing via the Glyphataur NPC.
  • A teleportation NPC has also been added inside the Siege of Orgrimmar raid, and will teleport players to any boss of their choosing.
    • PLEASE NOTE: While we have relative confidence in the teleportation functionality, teleporting to specific bosses directly in an unintended order may result in undiscovered issues with your raid. Our recommendation is to complete the raid in the original intended order.
  • During the PTR test, raids will reset daily, meaning that boss lockouts will reset daily instead of weekly. This is to facilitate attempting bosses repeatedly, if desired.

Legendary Questline

  • Testers can now complete the Legendary Cloak questline by killing Garrosh Hellscream during “Judgment of the Black Prince”.

Edit Mode

  • Edit Mode is now available as a quality-of-life option for interfaces.

Class Changes

Rogue

  • Subtlety
    • Rogues will no longer experience Ambush disappearing from their spell book when the Tier 16 4-piece bonus for Subtlety activates.
  • Combat
    • Sinister Strike changes from patch 5.5.0 have been reverted.
      • Sinister Strike’s Energy cost increased to 50 (was 40) (placed back into its original 5.4 state).
      • Sinister Strike’s weapon damage increased to 240% (was 192%) (placed back into its original 5.4 state).
        • Developers’ notes: In the previous phase, the Tier 15 set bonus would have out-performed the Tier 16 set bonus, and there were measures originally taken in 5.4 to ensure that Rogues did not feel required to continue using their Tier 15 set. As such, we are following suit and adjusting Sinister Strike so that the Tier 16 set bonus will now be an upgrade for Combat Rogues.

Big Fixes

  • Fixed a bug where Subtlety Rogues using the 4-piece Tier 16 set would lose access to Ambush.

Future Testing

The following features are not currently available for testing.

  • Celestial Dungeon updates
  • Challenge Mode updates
  • Proving Grounds

A Note on Flex Raiding

The final phase of the original Mists of Pandaria introduced Flexible Raid Difficulty, which existed in a format much different from the flex raiding feature that players have since come to know and use in subsequent expansions. The original Mists of Pandaria format for the system required manual (rather than automated) party creation, existed as its own difficulty level, and awarded gear at lower item levels than Normal difficulty, with no unique gear appearances which could not otherwise be achieved by participating in Normal raids.

In Mists of Pandaria Classic, Celestial Dungeons were introduced as a means to help players gear up and bridge the gap into Normal difficulty raids, one of the social underpinnings core to the game. Due in large part to the skill and knowhow of the game’s current players, these efforts have been successful. For this reason, and to avoid reintroducing a system which would counteract efforts to bring players into Normal raids, “Flexible Raid Difficulty” will not be available as its own difficulty in Mists of Pandaria Classic, at this time.

Known Issues

We are tracking the following known issues, and we are working to address them.

General

  • Heirloom items levels don’t increase with character level, although the stats do increase.

Timeless Isle

  • Treasure chests are not lootable.

User Interface

  • Nameplates are using the modern WoW version instead of the Classic one.
  • The Transmog UI won’t be available during the first few weeks of the PTR. Trying to access it will cause LUA errors.
  • There is an extra “Help” micro button on the action bar, causing the bar to cover one of the bag icons.
  • There are random texture strings attached to weapons on the Character Selection screen.
Flex Raiding
5.5.4 Rogue adjustments
Transmog Changes