8.0.x stuff

[Piralyn]

Some minor notes from the Q&A that are new-ish

Tank balance is being looked at. Brewmaster/Blood maybe too good, Prot Warrior and Bear not so good. (STAY AWAY FROM BLOOD YOU SON OF A BITCH)
Alliance will start the new Warfront in the contribution/raid phase.

[Piralyn]

A fun side note, though. Apparently some of the PvP hotfixes had unintended consequences (Battle for Azeroth: Unintended Consequences (tm)) and now Enhancement shamans below 120 actually have negative mana regen and their mana drains just for existing in PvP.

every bfa bug is hilarious in this very specific way i can't quite describe

I think the words you're looking for are in a way that shows "they were never tested via critical thinking or actually playing the thing."

Worth noting is that this pretty clearly isn't just perception. There's been a few interviews lately where it's clear that the "ready when it's ready" philosophy is no more and it's a "push out content as often as possible."

From the post-mortem Q&A with Ion via some person at Forbes.com

Newman: So why not act before release?

Hazzikostas: I came out in a couple months ago and said, "We know that there are elemental shamans, we know that there are shadow priests who have some concerns with the state of your current talent tree, the state of your class. But at this point those are going to have to wait for a major content update." That's just a question of us drawing a line at some point, because we could continue iterating forever. And it's not the same as saying those specs are unfinished, or we're shipping without them complete. Because the reality is they're never complete. That's the nature of World of Warcraft. Nothing is ever truly finished and even when we make those changes to, say, elemental shamans in an upcoming patch, are they done then? Does that mean there are no further changes to make to that specialization ever? Of course not.

Ultimately, steering the massive ship that is World of Warcraft towards a release date, and getting content into players' hands, we're always striking a balance between the core of the game, the quest content, the zone, the dungeons, the raids, the PVP systems and so forth. Those all need to be ready, we need to be happy with them and we're not gonna release those until all that is in place. We've tested it, we think they're fun. But at some point beyond that when it comes to polish, when it comes to iterating and tuning, we're not doing a good service to our player base as a whole if we say, "Okay, we're gonna hold back this entire expansion for millions of you just so that we can spend extra time responding to concerns with this one specialization." Concerns that may, in turn, lead to and require further iteration because we're not perfect and we're not gonna necessarily get it right on the first try.

Newman: What do you consider to be your top priorities at this point?
Hazzikostas: I would say the team's top priority overall is just continuing to keep the flow of content well-paced to match the example that we set in Legion: no major lulls or gaps in the story, more raids to take on, more stories to explore, more lands to explore. And that's probably the occupation of the majority of the team.

Emphasis mine. Clearly pace of content release is important--and that's a totally fair thing to focus on. I don't think anyone wants a WotLK or WoD 18 month content drought or whatever, but I think it would be pretty hard to argue that the dramatic swing to the other extreme has been a net positive for the gain. A lot of the more recent things are undoubtedly that they've been caught on their back foot trying to deal with the major hallmarks of this expansion being mostly loathed, so now they're just throwing hotfixes at the wall and hoping it makes things better--which means there's probably little to no testing and we get stuff like level 119 Enhancement Shamans mana draining themselves--but there's some larger pieces that it just seems unfathomable that they had to make such huge adjustments after release. How many traits/talents/things have been either buffed or nerfed by like 70-90%? That seems to me like something you should be able to eyeball. If you have to nerf some trait by 80% and buff some others by 50%, that's a crazy outlier.

[Marco]

Two things I took out of the Q+A:

* While they previously acknowledged that M+ is under-rewarding in the Azerite gear department, it sounds like we should expect something to actually happen in this department (no specifics).  It probably won't be as simple as "Azerite gear can drop from the end chest" because that would make M+ too rewarding overall relative to raiding and PvP.

* Some of the less successful Azerite traits will be retired in 8.1.  I think BfA started out with too many Azerite traits and pieces; while the system will still be too broad (in my opinion) in 8.1, at least it won't get as much worse along that dimension.

[Piralyn]

* Some of the less successful Azerite traits will be retired in 8.1.  I think BfA started out with too many Azerite traits and pieces; while the system will still be too broad (in my opinion) in 8.1, at least it won't get as much worse along that dimension.

Burn in hell Earth Elemental auto attack damage increase.

[Kharvek]

"We've now added an Azerite trait that makes your achievement menu open up 5% faster, scaling with ilvl"

[Piralyn]

"Your Feint now does 3 damage and costs 15% health."

"Azerite trait implemented that increases all text size by 10%"

"New Azerite Trait: Raging Inferno: Your Cooking Fire now gives allies 4 Strength in addition to 4 Spirit"

[jsoh]

Divine Comedy: While under the effects of Divine Shield, your hearthstone will always port you 100 yds above Dalaran Crater

[Marco]

As some players have noticed, we’ve been adding invasion-style events featuring new types of creatures to Island Expeditions every week. Aside from adding a little variety, these also give you a chance to earn different cosmetic rewards.

Here's a schedule for the remaining events which will be added each week over the next couple of months:
Week of October 9 (this week): Water Elementals
Week of October 16: Air Elementals
Week of October 23: Black Dragons
Week of October 30: Tol’vir
Week of November 6: Twilight Dragons
Week of November 13: Old Gods

(Old Gods?  I guess we'll see a lot of faceless; we can't possibly fight something like C'thun or Yogg-Saron in a 3-player scenario.)  The wowhead link below contains a dissection of what they think the associated rewards will be.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769617319#1
https://www.wowhead.com/news=287856/additional-invasion-types-coming-soon-to-island-expeditions

[Marco]

Hallow's End (live now) features a new toy for 150 tricky treats this year.  It's a hearthstone toy, similar to a couple of existing ones.  It has some visual and audio effects themed after the holiday.

While looking at the comments on the toy, I learned that Help -> Character Stuck -> Teleport to Graveyard can be used to get to the entrance (or last respawn point?) of a dungeon or raid without durability loss.  This apparently only works if you don't have a hearthstone in your bag, which is of course much more viable if you have one of the hearthstone toys.

https://www.wowhead.com/news=288002/hallows-end-2018-holiday-updates-and-guide
https://www.wowhead.com/item=163045/headless-horsemans-hearthstone

[Winston]

If I understand the tooltip correctly, the Headless Horseman's Hearthstone only works during Hallow's End. If it worked year-round, I'd grind for it.

[Marco]

I think "World Event: Hallow's End" refers to the source.  If it only worked during Hallow's End I think it would say "Requires Hallow's End".  I can't find any holiday-specific toys to verify that; I'm not sure there are any at present.

[HeidiB]

While looking at the comments on the toy, I learned that Help -> Character Stuck -> Teleport to Graveyard

I don't think this has ever done what I wanted it to.  I get stuck about once a year and have to use it anyway.

[Winston]

I got the Headless Horseman's Hearthstone last night. It shares a cooldown with your regular Hearthstone, so no advantage there.

What's annoying is that it doesn't recognize the Mission Research benefit of a 40% cooldown. When I used it, I got a 15-minute cooldown (reduced from 30 min due to the Guild perk), not the 9-minute cooldown. The regular hearthstone also gets the 15-minute cooldown when you use the HHH.

Unless you want the flaming-pumpkin effect as you hearth, you need the one extra slot of bag space, or you get stuck a lot, it doesn't seem worth the grind.

Edit: I just confirmed that the cooldown of my regular hearthstone, when used in Boralus, has been reset to 15 minutes. Crud.

Edit #2: Evidently this has been fixed. The cooldown on both hearthstone tooltips now reads 9 minutes.

[Marco]

PSA: We're currently working on a hotfix that will increase the gold and Azerite rewards from Emissary quests. We hope to have this change live within the next 24 hours, so if you have an active Emissary that rewards gold or Azerite, you may want to wait to complete it!

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/status/1054875828293533696

[Piralyn]

What's that? Wait once again before completing something?