Recent Posts

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by Marco on November 21, 2021, 12:38:52 PM »

Early profession notes, largely from https://www.wowhead.com/news/wowhead-economy-weekly-wrap-up-203-profession-updates-and-new-optional-reagents-325016 :

* As in 8.2, there are new crafting materials, which presumably only drop in Zereth Mortis.  Hopefully it won't be too difficult to farm the new herb like it was in BfA.  The rules against multiboxing might conceivably help.

* As with 9.1, the new legendary rank will work via an optional reagent (Vestige of the Eternal), so investments in rank 4 legendary crafting remain useful.  According to the Morgan Day interview there are five tier set slots and only 2/4-piece bonuses, so in theory all legendary slots are back in play.  However, the new second legendary will default to belt for most players, because quests will award one.

* There are some new optional reagents which add effects like "Chance to acquire additional resources from corpses" and "Increases movement speed and mount speed while in the Shadowlands".  Some of them carry DPS increases, so it's possible that BIS sets might include a crafted piece if it's possible to get these on something with a high enough item level.

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by Marco on November 20, 2021, 09:47:55 AM »

Morgan Day did a really meaty systems interview.  wowhead has a summary here:

https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-starting-zone-patch-9-2-interview-with-morgan-day-anduin-encounter-sepulcher-325004

For world-first raiders, a big question is how much variance there is in a character's power on mythic week and what the guild can do to minimize that variance.  Shards of Domination were terrible from that point of view because (1) there was a very large power variance depending on whether you got a shard set in the first two lockouts, (2) the only way to minimize variance was to run multiple alts of the same class, and (3) the system went in too late to prepare those alts.  So Limit and Echo did a lot of benching based purely on who was lucky enough to have the unholy bonus during mythic week.  In 9.2, set pieces will drop directly through personal loot (no tokens); minimizing variance will probably require heroic split raids with as few classes as possible (e.g. ten demon hunters, ten priests, ten mages, where only 1-2 of each class is a mythic main).  But at least that is known long enough in advance to prepare for it.

For progression but not top-tier players (whether in M+, raiding, PvP), a big question is how many weekly chores are needed to obtain the maximum player power, even if the power delta is small and only available after 1-2 months (like adding sockets to gear and upgrading conduits in 9.0 and 9.1).  From the interview, it sounds like 9.2 could be lighter in the chores department.  The Cipher of the First Ones system supposedly won't have power progression tied to it (except in Zereth Mortis itself); power such as legendary upgrades will instead come from a currency called Cosmic Flux which can be obtained in many ways, similar to Echoes of Ny'aloha at the end of BFA.  A risk is that the calendar-fastest way to maximize power will be to do some amount of everything during the week to maximize flux income, but we don't know yet if that will be the case.

For curve raiders, chores matter somewhat but it's less important if the power deltas are small, and typically it's possible for a significant fraction of the raid to ignore other content.  Morgan made it sound like there won't be extremely long fights like Sylvanas in this last raid, since the story doesn't require it.  We'll see.

I had one point of clear disagreement: Morgan mentioned that they liked introducing new dungeons as a mega-dungeon first so that players are more familiar with the dungeons by the time they are available in M+.  But this time around, there wasn't a reason to re-run Tazavesh after finishing it on hard mode, so there won't be a lot of familiarity.  I recall there being more reasons to re-run Operation Mechagon.  I'm not necessarily asking for that (it's hard enough for my dungeon group to find time for the M+ runs we want to do), but I don't think they are getting much mileage from the mega-dungeon period relative to what they are losing from the long delay before adding it to the M+ set.

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by ghoselle on November 19, 2021, 10:43:19 AM »

mmo-champion has a post highlighting the set bonuses:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/10209-Patch-9-2-Class-Tier-Set-Bonuses

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by Marco on November 13, 2021, 06:32:49 PM »

It looks like the last three bosses will be available on the third week on all difficulties except LFR, and that's the week mythic opens.  So no complication of the world first race (aside from no loot from those bosses during heroic week).

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-raid-is-timegated/1132258/69

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by **andius on November 13, 2021, 02:18:25 PM »

Jailer is definitely the last boss. What I found confusing was a blue post saying that the first 8 bosses (ending with Anduin) are going to be available in all modes first, and then the other three will be time-gated. This makes me wonder how they'll test those bosses.

Would also complicate the race for worlds first kills?

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / Re: 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by Snique on November 13, 2021, 08:48:42 AM »

Jailer is definitely the last boss. What I found confusing was a blue post saying that the first 8 bosses (ending with Anduin) are going to be available in all modes first, and then the other three will be time-gated. This makes me wonder how they'll test those bosses.

Preach had some interesting ideas, which revolve around two possibilities: with three weeks of raiding Blizzard can gather real-time data on raid's power levels when they are beating Anduin and then they can scale the last three bosses appropriately. Alternatively, one of the bosses before Anduin could be a very hard DPS and/or heal check and Blizzard can reasonably assume that if a raid can pass those hard checks they can handle the last three bosses. Meaning we might not see previews of the last few bosses on the PTRs and thus keep the end of the story mysterious for a while longer.

This risks players finding a mechanics glitch in the last three that likely nobody but world-first raiders will care about but I don't have a dog in that race so I don't care.

I really liked the preview video in that it had a handful of devs talking in detail and no Blizzard top honchos. I hope Blizz continues to lean in to the more transparent/wider bandwidth communication idea.

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Outside Azeroth - General Chatter / Re: Twitch sells Curseforge to Overwolf, affecting mod updates

« Last post by Marco on November 12, 2021, 06:29:34 AM »

> Third-party updaters work for now, but if they become popular, there's really no reason why Overwolf wouldn't block access to Curseforge from those updaters just as Curse did to wowmatrix back in the day.

There are some indications that this may happen early next year... sort of.  I haven't found a public URL for this, but in a discord for addon developers I saw discussion of a CurseForge API transition taking place over December to February.  An addon developer summarized it as "your stuff won't show up in the new API for third-parties unless you opt-in, and if you do you won't get any reward points for downloads through said API".  (Basically: people using third-party updaters aren't generating revenue for Overwolf, and they can't share revenue they aren't getting.)

So, in one possible future, all of the popular addon authors who host on CurseForge opt into the new API and nobody notices.  In perhaps more likely future, laziness or revenue sharing leads a non-trivial number of addon authors not to opt in, and third-party updaters stop updating those addons.  Third-party updaters can try to act like the official client to get around the restrictions, but that tends to be a losing game.

(Edited to add a wowhead article link: https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-end-of-ajour-overwolf-announces-new-api-roadmap-to-restrict-third-party-324892 )

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Theorycrafting and Class Discussion / 9.2.x stuff

« Last post by Marco on November 11, 2021, 09:27:17 AM »

Notes from today's video:

* This is the "third and final act", so there presumably won't be a 9.3.  Not a big surprise with their scheduling woes, and suggests an expansion announcement some time early next year.
* New zone is Zereth Mortis.  Most of the zone is a lush green with lots of water (though with auto-water-walking?) but there's also a sandy part.
* The time-gating progression of the new zone is called "the cipher of the first ones", where we learn the musical language of the automaton agents of the first ones and unlock stuff.
* New raid is the Sepulchre, with eleven bosses.  Bosses include some Jailer forces again, "a dreadlord or two", an Algalon-like thing, Anduin, and I guess Zovaal as the end boss.
* Class tier sets, as promised.  No details on the bonuses.
* Tazavesh added to M+, as expected (in two halves).
* DDR game in the Darkmoon Faire.  (Some of the Blizzard devs are really big into DDR.  Of course it doesn't translate into the wow engine even a little bit, but eh, it's just a DMF minigame.)

The art and sound design looks pretty good to me.  The systems stuff is similar to other content patches in the last few expansions, and they didn't go into a lot of detail at this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRWIW2VxgGs

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Trade and Crafting / Re: Rank 6 Leatherworking Legendaries

« Last post by Marco on November 10, 2021, 01:26:32 PM »

I can now make rank 6 leather wrists on Wabe.  Wabe is not part of my daily login rotation, so make sure to get my attention elsewise.  Materials are:

* 12 enchanted heavy callous hide
* 12 heavy callous hide
* 15 callous hide
* 45 heavy desolate leather
* 130 desolate leather
* 70 pallid bone
* 40 korthite crystal
* 30 orboreal shards (3000g if bought with rep discount)

The first five ingredients (hides and leather) can be crafted from 375 callous hide, 580 desolate leather, and 12 soul dust.

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Outside Azeroth - General Chatter / Re: Gender issues and gaming

« Last post by Winston on November 07, 2021, 04:30:09 PM »

Thanks; I got it! I'm still struggling to understand it. I get the impression that it's worth understanding.