If the truth hurts…
puts on shades
Cauterize it.
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Preview of the new waypoint & marker system.
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Okay yeah after experimenting with Photoshop (well not Photoshop but…) to see how exactly Blizzard might have arrived at the current style of dark skin, it’s… exactly what I thought. It’s just flatly changing the color - like, selecting a singular color they wanted, then applying that over the whole model.
Like, this is what I mean. Look at one versus the other. Look at how the pale skin has more variation – not just light & shadow, but actual variation within the skin itself. Is it still cartoony? Sure, that’s the art style. But there’s a very obvious difference.
This is what we were shown at Blizzcon and it certainly looks better. Like, the non-white faces have non-white features, so that helps a TON, but the actual skin tone on the body is probably going to be the same way as the Kul Tiran ones. Which maybe that doesn’t matter overall, since you aren’t likely to see the body that much unless you’re really into ERP, but…
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This is apparently a new Night Elf face/skin for Demon Hunter.…but anyone else seeing Nightborne with that jewelry ? I mean, overall, Nightborne and Kaldorei would share that design but it’s weird to see it haha.
It also looks like they’re sniping a Nightborne hairstyle that is better quality in terms of pixels and fluidity.
I just want what was shown at BlizzCon.
i think it’s pretty likely we’re going to see what was shown as blizzcon considering like two of the things presented there have been datamined? like if we’re numerous patches into alpha and we still don’t have it then there might be cause to blame blizzard for being worthless
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This is honestly the weirdest inclusion ive seen
Why do demon hunters need unique ears and hair
And why are they simply cloned over from nightborne.
My monie is its simply placeholders. The new custom hairs and ears arent done but they needed to test out the models and this was left in.
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Oh I have no doubt we’ll get those faces. It’s just whether or not everything else matches them in terms of quality/effort.
Oh I agree. This is day two of encryption so I’m holding out on my concerns.
Maybe they’re going to give Legion ARs something 
The top she is wearing is the Nightborne heritage armor recolor.
Like a straight copy paste.
Worth noting is that the “initial character customization” phase is not said to be coming for another week or two. That’s per the official blog post today. So we’re probably not seeing much at all in comparison.
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Maybe. Im a little biased and think they should focus on the stock options but if they can port some new draenei or nelf options to lightforged and nightborne more power to them
Tbh, this is all I would really expect them to do. Just adding different thematic jewelry for certain styles.
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Theres def been some jewelry uncovered so i really hope they flesh it out.
Im pretty excited for more facepaint too
I’m a bit late to the party (and not an active player so, void this if you will) but I’m not 100% on the AoE changes. Mind you, I have not read, so if I’m missing details I apologize.
For example; Currently is the aoe capping applied haphazardly? Is the focus on ground / targeted aoes or does it take into account cleaves / lines?
Perhaps mostly a subjective / effort gripe, but when I hit whirlwind, I expect it to hit all the targets around me. Not “a couple”, not “most”, I expect it to hit all the targets in range. That’s kind of the whole point, that’s what it’s for. Otherwise (when it mattered), you’d use Cleave, or Sweeping Strikes, or etc. That’s part of what makes the aoe’s different and what marks their usefulness, yadda yadda.
I want to be able to expressly determine what does or doesn’t get hit. It’s not my fault that dungeon and world design so happens that massive clumps of targets are easily pulled together and nuked. Make more mobs that are ranged, give more classes a death grip or ranged silence, make the gameplay matter. When my whirlwind suddenly just stops hitting one target in a group of six because “lol target cap”, I am not being punished for poor positioning, I’m being punished for poor game design.
There’s alternate options too. You can reduce the damage done to targets over the cap rather than just… Not hitting things. You can start redesigning aoe so it’s not just… Circles and lines. You can design mobs to do things that de-incentivize clumping.
But it’s alpha blah blah unifnished yadda yadda you don’t even go here.
I know, I know, I’m just abusing the soapbox. It just doesn’t make… Sense as a design change. It doesn’t make sense aesthetically, it doesn’t make sense in terms of gameplay. It’s bad design, as far as I’m concerned.
Ion doing an interview at the moment on some streamers…stream. I’ll relay the highlights from WoWHead but it just started.
Highlights and Summary
Is this a final list of things or can we expect more things unpruned or talent reworks?
There isn’t another large drop of additional changes that are planned. But they wanted to do the big changes and revamps in now so that they can get feedback and not have to fix them in a future patch.
What’s going on with the AoE Cap?
It was framed as the majority of AoE capped, but Ion’s not sure that it’s true. This serves to increase the distinction between “cleave” and “AoE”. A lot of melee specs used to excel at cleave and then you had your Rain of Fire or Arcane Explosion for AoE.
In Legion, there was a lot of simplification but it destroyed the class diversity. Even with playing in Torghast, the “right way” to play was the train a large group of mobs, pop cooldowns and AoE it down. It shouldn’t be the only right way to play. The goal is not to kill big pulls forever but that there are more unique strengths.
This will have an effect. Pulling 20 mobs and AoE’ing them down is fun and they don’t want to get rid of that, but it’s a new degenerate playstyle that they don’t want it to be the one solution to very problem. They’re confident that players will be able to adapt.
Any updates to the GCD changes?
The individual examples (Frenzied Regen, Paladin LoTP, Fiery Brand), are good examples to give feedback on. For example, Death Strike has always been on the GCD, similarly for Bubble. They’ll look at specific examples and evaluate them one by one. Providing specific examples feel ok and these ones feel crappy are more helpful.
Master Looter
No plans to bring it back. Involving agency and Personal Loot. That’s the path they’ve committed to.
Mission Table
Yes. Adventures as part of the Sanctum/Covenant system. Don’t want it central but something that you can do on your phone. They are looking to evolve the gameplay and have a little more this time.
Gear Swapping in Dungeons
No current plans. Will continue to discuss.
Tier Sets
Magic 8 ball says quite possibly. It’s something their art team wants to do again. Won’t be there for 9.0 but want to do it later in the expansion. They want to modernize Tier.
The art, the class fantasy; they want to capture that.
Alt Unfriendliness
On all fronts, Shadowlands should be better. There’s no AP system – one of the things driven alt unfriendliness.
There’s been a notion that feedback wasn’t listened to.
A lot of the time, they’re just behind. They’re still developing the feature while feedback is coming in. Azerite Armor was like that, they said that players can’t see the full picture as they’re only with leveling traits right now, so they dismissed some of the feedback. However, they got Azerite Armor out so late.
In 8.2 they tried to release everything so early. Here’s how you obtain the Essences and what they do. They want to release everything important for Shadowlands early.
Covenant Player Power and Swapping
This is a super hot topic, not just in the community but in the team. Broad thoughts:
- Covenants are a gameplay focused, each with 3 soulbinds and Covenant specific abilities or Legendary specific Covenant abilities, that come with cool mounts.
- They have a lot of tools and feels they can balance them. Differences exist but how big are they?
- Meaningful choice. RPG aspect of identity. They want there to be choice, they don’t want a Kyrian to be going around using Blood Venthyr abilities.
- If all else fails, they can give up and let players swap whenever you want.
RNG Behind Gear - Will there be RNG counterbalance?
Some of the stuff announced at BlizzCon – if you do more than just your M+15, you should get more choices at the end of the week and then you can pick out of that range of all the options, or a fall back option.
There are attempts to solve a problem that they’re created themselves, with the increase in the number of drops, which is that the raid is saturated on gear before you even complete the tier. This is why Thunderforging, WF and TF existed, let’s give you a chance to still get excited.
No plans on Warforging or Titanforging, but just reduce the amount of loot. Just let loot be loot. Still plan on Avoidance. Undecided on Sockets yet.
Impactful Rotation - Lots of things don’t actually feel like part of your rotation like Trinkets, Corruption, Auto Attacks, etc.
One thing is just tuning. They missed the mark on tuning but with people buying BoEs, and itemizations, they didn’t want to change it. The passive options shouldn’t sim the best, they should be middle of the road.
Randomness of Procs: The variation is performance from pull to pull should largely depend on your skill. Things like how many times did Infinite Stars procs or your Vision of Perfection procs is very important in your goal to beat yourself.
Sometimes it takes a while to change a clear issue (e.g. Warrior Thunderclap or Dungeon Tuning). Look at Tuning more frequently?
That’s always a goal. There were a few passes on the Warrior Thunderclap playstyle: they want to let player playstyles that they didn’t plan for play out and see how it goes. If they’re ridiculously overpowered, that’s bad but it takes them to figure out if it’s overpowered or not. Thunderclap was facilitated by Azerite Traits, and they were a little hesitant because they have already made itemization changes. At the time, live balance was not a high priority at the time as they were trying to fix Azerite Armor. A solution was a better Alpha and Beta.
Revamp Mythic+ Affixes?
Nothing specific to announce. They’re happy with the structure of Mythic+. They’re happy with how Seasonal affixes turned out – maybe some tuning. They do want to chase Kiss/Curse. No plans to blow it up and put it back together.
Additional Rewards from Mythic+?
AOTC and CE for Mythic+. Loot plans, increasing chances of a specific piece of loot by running more than just your 1 dungeon a week. They don’t want to take it too far for those who don’t like dungeons.
With no TF or WF, they need a reason for people to continue running dungeons. One reason is that it increases the quality or number of choices of loot at the end of the week.
Is entering Torghast limited?
That’s something that they need to dial in. Current plan is that there will be some limit. Even if you can’t do it for some rewards, it leads to a feeling that you need to practice for the runs that do count.
Rewards?
Prestige, Cosmetic Unlocks, free people in the tower and unlock stuff at your Covenant. Legendaries are the prime reward and layer on additional rewards.
Legendaries
They’re craftable, unlock recipes from a wide variety of sources (Maw, Torghast similar to Essences). Recipes are account-wide. By running with Torghast, you can craft a base item then go to a forge in Torghast and add the legendary effect. The one who is making these legendaries for you eventually made Frostmourne. These are some of the origins of the 2p and 4p legendaries and Legion legendaries. You may be able to find some of those old bonuses returning.
Torghast going forward through the expansion.
The nature of Torghast can unlock new powers, new rewards, new creatures. No plans for leaderboards but there are plans for the standard achievements and see how that evolves. They want to see how the community reacts to it.
World Quests
World Quests 2.0
No plans to have emissaries. Replaced with “callings” from your Covenant. Nazjatar and Mechagon was an experiment. They want to have more flexibility than just do 3/4 world quests.
PvE and PvP
Cross Between PvP and PvE
Having them into the same shared chest where you can choose the one you prefer, should reduce some of the pressure. Some amount of Cross Over is healthy. Someone who can excel in all aspects of the game should have a slight advantage.
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Not to interrupt you mid loose transcript, thanks tonnes by the way, but this is a thing that can not be changed by limiting the players’ ability to address situations. The situations have to change. I.e. mobs have to be dangerous in ways that prevent them from being AoE spammed.
Like with the second comment there about players “adapting”. The adaptation is that smaller groups will get aoe’d. Unless single target damage is so unanimously overpowered that aoe’ing is slower, in which case that will become the degenerate strategy.
Some folks hate WoWhead and Twitch soo XD
Remember when we had dedicated Q&As for stuff like that?
I mean, I guess it takes more coordination than just popping into someone’s stream unannounced, but I always remember them harping on how much better their communication would be when we haven’t had any kind of Q&A for at least six months, to my knowledge.
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This…gives me a lot of pause.
Beyond just being more veiled laziness, an MMO kind of…can’t work like that. If you want to keep it fresh, you need to add new content. If you add new content, then things with the classes are going to change and the developers need to intervene, or we end up with multiple classes not being useful for an entire expansion.
It sounds like they want to nail it right out of the gate and then just not do any more work on it later.
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I’m trying to find out who this streamer is, who Sloot is, but I really have no idea. I’m guessing he is a promoter and possibly a Mythic Raider guy in one of the top teams.
Tier sets are probably coming back later in Shadowlands.
Hot idea
Make some cool unique sets that crafting can make and then sell on the ah for mogging
So i dont have to run raids or do mythics to look good and i dont have to worry about looks being locked out eventually