FAZ 84 – “Meaningful Progression”

Manny and Joce had a lot to catch up on this week. They cover the 8.2 PTR changes, an interview with Ion, 8.2 testing, WoW Classic, and take your emails!

8.2 Looms Ever Closer

Three new builds have hit the PTR since our last recording. None have been flagged as a release candidate but each build has done a lot to round out the offerings of 8.2.

• Season 3 will begin 2 weeks after the release of 8.2
• Cinematics implemented in the latest patch.
• New Azerite Traits have been added for both AEP and Benthic Gear.
  • Arcane Heart: Every X damage and healing done you gain Omnipotence, increasing your highest stat by an large amount for 15 sec. You heal for 5% of all Arcane damage taken.
  • Loyal to the End: Your Mastery is increased by an amount, plus an additional smaller amount for each ally also affected by Loyal to the End, up to a cap. When you die, your allies gain Critical Strike, Haste, and Versatility equal to their Mastery bonus from this trait.
  • Undulating Tides: Your damaging spells and abilities have a chance to crash a wave upon your target for a large amount of Frost damage. When your health drops below 50%, gain a shield absorbing some damage within 8 sec. When this occurs, Undulating Tides cannot trigger again for 45 sec.
• Essences have been interrated upon:
  • The Major trait of Vision of Perfection Ranks 2 and 3 were nerfed for most specializations but buffed for 4 healer specializations and the minor trait was nerfed across the board. Some classes have had which ability procs changed.
  • Some of the talents gifted by the major trait of Conflict and Strife have been reworked.
  • Number tuning for many others.
• Nazjatar Reworked:
  • Benthic Gear revised. The tokens that change into gear are BoA. Which means you can send a nearly full set of 385 gear to your alts.
  • You no longer purchase tokens to upgrade the gear. An Ethereal, Voidbinder Zorlan will charge you an ever increasing fee to jump 15 ilvls the first time (to ilvl 400) and then 5 ilvls each time successive time. The first jump cost 20 Prismatic Manapearls. The second upgrade cost 10 and the third cost 15.
  • Additional introductory quests have been added to zone which give relatively large amounts of Manapearls and familiarize player’s with this new system.
  • Daily quests have been decentralized and give random rewards.
  • NPC Bodyguards have a meta daily mission requiring you to complete 3 missions with them
  • Bodyguards give gifts as they level up (Prismatic Manapearls, on use items)
  • Bodyguards can no longer be switched at a whim and are locked in for the day.
  • The two “activity gate” quests have been replaced with the requirement that you level one of your followers up in ranks.
• Mounts galore
  • 30 new mounts introduced
  • 90k gold sink mounts
• Azerite Rewards Increased from Emissaries and Islands but not rewards for random dungeons or raid
• Tauren and Gnome mount size change
• Mounts Galore
• Off Season Detailed

Forbes Interview with Ion Hazzikostas

Forbes sat down with Game Director, Ion Hazzikostas, to talk about what is coming in 8.2. Ion talked much about the inspirations for Nazjatar and Mechagon.

• Compared and contrasted the content of the two end game zones
• Commented about reputation gates are preferable to time gates
• Obtaining Flying is possible before the start of Season 3 but not probable.
• Team looking at coordinating their spawns across servers and across shards.
• Balancing the desirability of gear from different sources
• Discussed why we will not see major class overhauls mid expansion
• Forbes Interview

8.2 Testing

There has been a lot of testing in the past few weeks and more to come.

Highlights of the past testing:

• Heroic Warfronts
  • Need a premade to join (was Horde only)
  • Scales to your group 10 – 20 players
  • Definitely balanced against geared players
  • 6.4 mil health in 20 man normal, 19.4 in 16 man heroic
  • Stuff costs more, boss joins the fight periodically and must be dps’d to 60% to force a retreat
  • Bugs!
  • Still the same warfront (like seriously needs more)
  • Rewards 425 loot
• Ashran Testing
  • Plays like Alterac Valley
  • Events gone!
  • You can complete Nemesis Quests in the zone!
• Raid Testing
  • Past Testing: (this happened while we were away)
    • Queen Azshara – Heroic Eternal Palace
    • Abyssal Commander Sivara – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • Lady Ashvane – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • The Queen’s Court – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • Radiance of Azshara – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • Normal Eternal Palace Bosses 1-4
  • Upcoming Mythic Raid Testing on Friday, June 7th:
    • Za’qul, Harbinger of Ny’alotha – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
    • Blackwater Behemoth – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
    • Orgozoa – Mythic Eternal Palace
    • 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 24:00 CEST)

• Upcoming Mythic Testing
• Past Ashran “Brawl with the Blues” Testing
• Past Heroic Testing
• Past Mythic and Normal Testing and Heroic Battleground Testing

WoW Classic

The World of Warcraft Classic Beta has been progressing as we move towards the Aug. 27th release date. Joce has had a chance to get some hands on time in the beta while Manny doesn’t want to spend time in the beta only to burn out before it hits live servers… wait what?

• Level Cap on beta has been raised to 40
• Arathi Basin available for testing
• Blizzard continues to add to it’s “not a bug list”
• Player’s are actively recruiting on the beta for guilds and raid teams for the release
• World of Warcraft surged up in popularity on Twitch viewership and has now settled down to 5th most viewed category.
• Official Blue Post

Podcast (faz-pod): Download (Duration: 2:27:48 — 135.4MB)