Joce and Manny are back with Season 2 updates, coverage of Mythic+ and WoW Classic dev interviews, as well as discussing Raidbots new feature Droptimizer before taking an email about the current state of Blizzard and their fans.

Get Your Crit Together is looking for a few good players!
Looking for a dedicated healer and ranged dps to round out the roster.
Raid Times: Tuesdays and Sundays from 10:30 ET – 12:30 ET
Contact: @SivPlaysGames or @JocePlays

Blizzard talks Season 2

Ion posted to the official forums, talking about the transition into season 2; how loot systems would work going forward; and destroyed the best-laid plans of min-maxers. The communication did not stop there however as several articles and posts have outlined details about this new phase of BfA.

  • The Item Level Cap moves up from 395 to 425.
  • Darkshore rewards increased from 385 to 400 for the once-per-cycle siege quest reward and the patrol phase world boss. (Arathi remains unaffected.)
  • Special note: The two Darkshore changes will only take effect after the current Warfront cycle has ended. So if Alliance is attacking Darkshore in a given region when Season 2 begins, and has 3 days left in that attack cycle, that Darkshore will still give Season 1 rewards.
  • Emissary caches and similar rewards like Assault wrapper quests will award loot based on your spec (or loot spec, if chosen) instead of your class.
  • Emissary weapon and armor rewards will scale up to 385 (based on a player’s own item level), up from 370.
  • The rewards for in-progress emissary quests may re-roll or update when Season 2 begins, though the quests themselves won’t reset or change.
  • The loot from Kul Tiras and Zandalar world bosses will remain item level 355, on par with Normal Uldir.
  • Standard world quests will continue to provide rewards based on class rather than spec.
  • Difficulty of Heroic and Mythic dungeons will also go up by roughly 30%; Normal dungeons are unchanged.
  • The item level of rewards from max-level Normal, Heroic, and Mythic dungeons will go up by 30. Baseline rewards will be 340 from Normal, 355 from Heroic, and 370 from non-Keystone Mythic.
  • Mythic Keystones will go down by an additional 3 levels when the season transition occurs, to account for this difficulty increase.
  • Mythic+ rewards will also go up by 30 item levels; however, during the first week of Season 2, rewards from end-of-run chests will be capped at Mythic 6 quality (item level 385), and the chest you open next week will contain Season 1 rewards if you do a Mythic+ run this week.
  • The weekly cache that becomes available in the second week of the season will not be affected by this cap, so if a player does a Mythic 10 dungeon during the first week, they will get a Mythic 10 reward (item level 410+) from their cache the following week
  • Ion’s First Week Transition Details Post
  • Ion’s Blue Post on Spec vs Class rewards.

Blizzard is releasing four new Collector’s Books

Blizzard is releasing four books this year, covering three of their properties.

  • The Art of Hearthstone: Year of the Kraken (second Art of Hearthstone volume to be released), The Art of Diablo, The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft, and the World of Warcraft Pop Up Book
  • They will arrive in the Fall, no official release date or prices yet
  • Four New Collectible Blizzard Books

Forbes Mythic+ Interview with Morgan Day

Forbes interviewed Morgan Day about Mythic+. There was a large focus on balance, both of dungeons and affixes.

  • Fortified and Teeming problems are expected to resolve themselves once Infested makes way for Reaping
  • Adds created by Reaping are not impacted by affixes, though the are impacted by Fortified in that their health is dictated by the health of the add that spawned them
  • No plans to go back to being able to reroll keys. The team is instead focused on balancing the dungeons better
  • They do the affix rotation to make each of the 10 dungeons feel unique week to week, though they are aware that some combinations in some dungeons are harder than others, so they are looking at those interactions to bring them in line with others
  • Blizzard is focusing on making progress steady week over week, so that teams aren’t getting high keys one week and low keys the next because of affix combinations. They maintain a list of combinations they rotate through, so it’s not random, and if they see a discrepancy in performance then they will adjust
  • Full Interview

WoW Classic Interview

Brian Birmingham and Omar Gonzalez, from the Classic WoW Team, were interviewed by the German site Computer Bild about the state of WoW Classic and the challenges they’re facing.

  • The world and the challenges it poses forces players to interact with each other and find friends to help them complete tasks, this is the foundation of Classic WoW
  • They aren’t just rebuilding the game and the servers, but the community as well
  • In Classic WoW, everything can pose as a threat, unlike modern WoW. This forces social interactions as well, because it becomes dangerous to leave the city alone even just to quest
  • Leveling is also much different from Classic to now. In modern WoW, leveling is a means to an end, to become strong enough to get to end game content which is where the game really starts. In Classic, leveling was the game, and there was limited end game content
  • The biggest challenge the team had when rebuilding Classic WoW was figuring out how the game actually worked back in 2004, since people don’t remember things perfectly
  • Some bug reports from BlizzCon weren’t actually bugs, but were the way the game actually played (Warlock summons, Warrior Charge)
  • There are currently no plans for BC or WOTLK, though they aren’t ruling it out. They want to see what the community thinks once Classic has actually released.
  • WoW Classic is meant to be a more traditional, complicated experience, it’s not meant to compete with or replace modern WoW
  • Original Interview (German)

Raidbots: Droptimizer

Raidbots.com, which was first covered back in episode 36 of For Azeroth has added the Droptimizer to it’s suite of tools. The Droptimizer will evaluate potential upgrades from any particular content against what you have equipped and tell you what to add to your wish list. This is the first incarnation of the tool, and the author has noted that they are exploring additional functionality.

  • Azerite gear test are only available to premium members. Azerite items will be tested with combinations of powers of the outer, DPS-focused powers.
  • Each potential upgrade is tested individually and not in combination (set bonuses)
  • Chance of warforge/titanforge/sockets is not evaluated.
  • Enchants are copied from your current items.
  • Rings and trinkets are tried in both slots (as long as a Unique-Equipped constraint is not violated).
  • Dual wield classes try weapons in both hands.
  • Simulation time is slower when there are more potential upgrades.
  • Droptimizer always uses Smart Sim. All potential upgrades are simulated at 0.05% target error.
  • The results can be sorted by priority, boss order, expected value and best drop.
  • Priority lists an aggregate field that combines Expected Value, chance of getting an upgrade vs getting an item you won’t use, and the Best Drop. The idea is to rank bosses based on the most likely to give you the best gear.
  • Boss Order will list bosses that do not have any drops for you just to maintain the order.
  • Expected Value is the average DPS increase of an item. Downgrades from your current gear count as 0 DPS (instead of negative). Items that are not simmed are also shown as 0 DPS.
  • Best Drop shows the highest possible DPS gain from the items that drop from the boss. This can be used to prioritize which bosses to use your bonus roll on rather than targeting a specific item.
  • Seriallos’ Explanation Article
  • Droptimizer Direct Link