9.0.x stuff

[Marco]

I'll kick off this thread now that we have a pre-patch release date (October 13).  wowhead has a summary of what's coming: https://www.wowhead.com/news=318159/shadowlands-pre-patch-release-date-is-october-13th

[Marco]

Two random PTR notes:

* Although passive corruption resistance on the legendary cloak is gone, the on-use effect is still there (just useless).  That means you still can't tinker an engineering glider onto it, unfortunately.

* With all expansions topping out at level 50, I figured all of their profession consumables would be equally powerful until Shadowlands obsoletes them all.  However, there still seems to be a definite hierarchy, albeit not as pronounced.  For instance, BfA greater flasks grant 38 agi (regular 25), Legion ones 21 agi, and WoD ones 18 (greater or regular).  Potions of Prolonged Power are actually kind of competitive; they only grant 40 stats vs. 129 for a superior BfA pot, but they grant it for 60 seconds instead of 25, so they're about 75% as good, and they grant stamina.  Enchants for slots that aren't enchantable in BfA tend to top out at item level 50.  BfA ring enchants are +9 secondary stat (6 and 4 for lower-tier enchants), while Legion ones are 3 (2 for lower-tier).

[Piralyn]

There's a lot like that between the expansions. I looked back at previous trinkets, since I figured the level changes might make things from previous expansions competitive. As an aside, spoiler: Arcanocrystal will probably be good again.

But, most raid gear from earlier expansions, actually has a lower required level and item level than later expansions. So, stuff from like Wrath required like... level 30 or something in the Beta and had an equivalent ilvl. I don't know if that's on purpose or not--or if it's representative of the scaling of the early expansions' raids to make them still soloable. I would assume most standard dungeon/quest loot will scale to your level to some extent, but unsure.

[Marco]

Patch notes: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23529209/shadowlands-pre-expansion-patch-notes

It looks like the bursting/volcanic/sanguine/grievous/explosive affix changes will be going in, but the two new affixes (and of course the seasonal Prideful affix) won't be in for the prepatch.  I'm guessing that Awakened will still be in for the off-season, but I don't really know.

[Marco]

A 9.0 change that hasn't received too much discussion is diminishing returns on secondary stats.  This is intended to head off degenerate behavior at high gear levels and to encourage diversifying stats (which in turn reduces the power gap between players who just wear the highest-ilvl gear they can and players who accumulate BIS gear determined through).  The thresholds were recently updated to 30%, 39%, 47%, 54%, and 66%.  Each threshold applies a stacking 10% penalty to further points in the secondary stat.  There is also a hard cap of 126%.

The thresholds unfortunately aren't nice round numbers, but I think they can be applied intuitively rather than just simulating each piece of gear.  If your class guide says something like "haste > crit >> mastery > versatility", and you have 50% haste but less than 30% crit, then you can guess that crit might be better than haste at the moment, while mastery and versatility might still be bad stats (though not as bad).

https://www.wowhead.com/guides/diminishing-returns-on-secondary-stats-in-world-of-warcraft

[**andius]

If they made all stats equal good then there would be no need for this.
As it is it could lead to holding on to gear that is equal to what you are wearing in case replacing some other gear makes it an upgrade :/

[Marco]

If they made all stats equal good then there would be no need for this.
As it is it could lead to holding on to gear that is equal to what you are wearing in case replacing some other gear makes it an upgrade :/

From past dev interviews, I don't think the intention is for all pieces of gear at the same item level to be precisely equally good.  The system is intended to reward putting more thought into gearing and perhaps holding onto multiple pieces of gear at similar item level (something I already do in case the theorycrafting for my spec changes).  But that reward is supposed to be within limits; they don't like it when full-tier upgrades aren't better due to stats, and they don't like it when a player who uses all of the theorycrafting resources has an enormous advantage over a player who goes purely by item level.

[Piralyn]

I think this is another case of them being somewhat close to what the problem actually is, but fixing the wrong thing. It's perfectly reasonable to want gearing to be simpler and not require a complex simulation to manage--but I don't see how having some under the hood diminishing returns that you can't easily eyeball is going to make that happen less and not more. It seems counter-intuitive to their apparent goal to have a piece of gear that's "105 Crit and 90 Mastery" actually only be the equivalent of 80 Crit and 67 Mastery. There's already some obfuscation with the Rating to % conversion, and I'm not sure how having a sliding scale for that conversion that isn't readily apparent is going to make that better and not worse.

I get the goal here. There's almost always several specs that by the end of the expansion can do crazy shit by virtue of stacking a secondary--like Pira having like 65-85% crit in a spec that procs things off of crits--but this is just going to add another layer of hesitation to selecting gear. They didn't like reforging because it caused extra calculations and made you play tetris with your gear. This is going to cause extra calculations and make you play tetris with your gear. Do I use piece A, B, and C and have some diminishing returns on piece A, or do I use A, B, and D (which has weaker secondaries for me) and get full ratings on all three? Which one is better?

I have no idea until I sim two sets of gear.

[Marco]

They didn't like reforging because it caused extra calculations and made you play tetris with your gear.

Not really--Tetris would have gone away with hit and expertise rating.  They didn't like reforging because it was an extra step before you could equip almost any piece of gear, and it made all gear behave very similarly.

Do I use piece A, B, and C and have some diminishing returns on piece A, or do I use A, B, and D (which has weaker secondaries for me) and get full ratings on all three? Which one is better?

The answer is going to be "it's very close", similar to how it currently is when you have a piece at item level X with good stats and a piece with item level X+10 with bad stats.  Being able to choose better between two very similar choices with a simulator doesn't go against the design.  (One could argue that RPGs should allow players to be perfectly optimal without a simulator, but I haven't seen a solution to that that doesn't make gear very simplistic.)

[Piralyn]

Relics of the Past have been even further killed in an--I believe--undocumented last minute change before the pre-patch went live. The Relic of the Past V option now just raises the item level of the crafted item to 54, which is not likely to be very useful. Presumably this is because they were petrified of some old trinkets/gear being able to be ilvl 87 wreaking some sort of havoc in the month or two of pre-patch.

[jsoh]

Don’t know if it’s global, but the electric pylons in the last boss of junkyard are... not clickable.

Now you know before you start.

[Marco]

Presumably this is because they were petrified of some old trinkets/gear being able to be ilvl 87 wreaking some sort of havoc in the month or two of pre-patch.

I've seen other people speculate that it was about speed sets, but without any messaging it's just guesswork.

The nerfed item levels seem to be in line with heirloom gear at the point of the level requirements.  If these numbers had been in place for the whole of the PTR/beta, I don't think they would have raised any eyebrows.  They also wouldn't have generated any excitement, but crafted gear for below max level has always been very missable.

[Marco]

Addon notes:

* You can apparently update addons without restarting the client.  Previously, small addon changes could be recognized with a reload, but bigger changes and new addons wouldn't be recognized.  Now on raid nights when DBM says there's a new version, you can just /reload after updating it.

* An unusually high percentage of addons broke this time due to a change to the UI code; almost anything that puts up a window needs to be updated.

* The person who wrote the Angry mods (like Angry World Quests) appears not to be around any more, so if you use any of those you might want to look into alternatives.  I switched to MythicPlusTimer and World Quest Tab on the recommendation of a wowhead post.

https://www.wowhead.com/news=318451/best-addons-for-the-shadowlands-pre-patch
https://www.wowhead.com/news=318536/addons-can-be-installed-and-updated-without-closing-the-game

[Snique]

(I dunno if this wants it own thread or what - move it as you wish)

Wowhead posted its guide to the updated Mythic affixes: https://www.wowhead.com/guides/shadowlands-season-1-mythic-dungeon-guide-affix-changes