The human racial “Diplomacy” is supposed to give us 10% reputation. But I have noticed that, since the pre-patch, it’s only giving us 5%.
The Uldum quests, for example, give 250 reputation, but my human character is getting only 262.5 reputation instead of 275.
So a small addendum:
Before the pre-patch, the human racial Diplomacy would give +10% rep after it was doubled up by the Impressive Influence buff.
And now it seems the Diplomacy racial is only counting the original reputation and ignoring the Impressive Influence buff when counting the bonus.
I see no reason why this would have happened unless it was an intentional change. It definitely isn’t documented anywhere.
The reason I see this as intentional is because the formula would have to have changed from…
original * 1.1(racial) * 2(rep event)
to…
( original * 2(rep event) ) + ( original * .1(racial) )
Removing the event from the equation now that I wrote it out, it looks like they might have changed the human racial bonus to calculate as this:
original + (original * .1)
which would cause it to skip any additional bonuses for the human racial calculation.
Honestly, while this looks like it’s very much working as intended…it is a boneheaded change, makes the human racial description incredibly misleading, and should be reverted.
If they want to keep the calculation as a decimal then what they should do is…
( original * applicable-bonuses) + (new-original * .1)
but this is really just being overly complicated and pedantic for the sake of such and has little difference mathematically.
I have experienced identical functionality before and after the pre-patch. The Diplomacy Bonus was only applying the base value, and has never accounted for the Impressive Influence buff. I don’t think this is a bug as it has always functioned this way.
Which strikes me as weird because, as an example, when the Impressive Influence buff first went live, I would get 3000 rep from the emissary quests (1500 base + 1500 buff ) plus 300 rep for the Diplomacy racial trait.
Now, when the Impressive Influence buff returned, in October, I’m only getting 3150 rep per emissary. I searched everywhere and couldn’t see a single documented change about the racial trait anywhere, which leads me to think and hope this is a bug.
It never worked that way for me before the patch. The Diplomacy and Darkmoon rep buffs were both being fully included in calculations for rep bonus buffs like “Sign of the Emissary” and “Impressive Influence” (though the two former buffs I mentioned have always stacked together additively). I have more than enough experience between the 89 paragon caches I had to do to finish Mechagon, Nazjatar, and Rajani’s paragon rewards to know that this is how it functioned.
Sign of the Emissary is now also not stacking with Impressive Influence the way it did before the patch. Both are calculating their bonuses only on the base value instead of being multiplicative. A world quest that should reward 75 * 2 * 1.5 for 225 total for non-humans is now only awarding 75 + (75 * 1.0) + (75 * 0.5) for 187.5 total despite these same world quests rewarding 225 before the patch. The difference is quite significant over time.
There was clearly a change made with how rep bonuses from buffs/events stack in order to make them additive like how the Diplomacy + Darkmoon combination has already worked. All it is doing though is increasing player time played and causing frustration by changing mechanics that have worked the same since these types of events began in WoD. There’s little logic or reason to be doing this now without any sort of hint or announcement (except perhaps to artificially bump up time played).
The Impressive Influence buff was always additive, not multiplicative. This was explained the first time it was available in the spring.
I’m fairly certain this is also the first time the Impressive Influence and World Quest bonus events have ever overlapped. I recall the spring buff ending just before a WQ bonus event, and the fall buff starting just after a WQ bonus event ended. The in-game calendar agrees with my memory, other than maybe a few hours on the morning of September 1st? They probably never would have overlapped if not for the Shadowlands delay.