8.2.x Stuff

[Snique]

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

Taliesin & Evitel interview Jeremy Feasel (Blizz Senior Game Designer)  about "future things" that turns out to be mostly 8.2.x things.

[Snique]

Apparently flying is coming in 8.2.x (again, a snippet from a T&E video where he's basically ranting about how bad the Horde hub city experience is).

[Piralyn]

Azerite System

 

•   Having to re-earn your traits as you get better gear is not fun and something they want to completely move away from.
•   8.2 will continue to have new Azerite traits unique to Azshara's raid or to Mechagon that compliment the existing pool of traits.
•   Traits will be fully unlocked and players can choose their talents that best fits their play style.
•   The Heart of Azeroth will continue to use Azerite Power for a progression path on the Heart itself that consists of both passive and active traits.
•   Active abilities will be actual new spells that are placed on the hotbar and have a meaningful change to your combat rotation immediately.
•   Addressing the core system of Azerite Armor was something Tides of Vengeance couldn't do, and so the team added the 5th ring and more customization while they worked on the new system for the past couple months.

Emphasis mine. It's almost as if blowing up a system that worked pretty well in one expansion just to have a brand new one turned out to be a a bad idea. Wild.

[Piralyn]

Future Expansion Feature Design

•     The team learned a lot about the importance of player agency.
•     The Azerite System was designed to respond to the failings of Legion Artifacts in which the customization was very frontloaded.
•     They feel that having all traits unlocked on Legion weapons, not having any big choices, and being the same as every other person of your class was a missed opportunity to give players more choice.
•     One of their biggest mistakes in the BfA beta was waiting too long to get the Azerite Armor and traits fully stood up in the beta.
•     Going forward, the team is going to have a much higher priority on getting end game gear progression into the player's hand in the early stages of the alpha and beta tests.

Spoiler: The same thing's gonna happen in the next expansion's testing cycle

[Piralyn]

A lot of the current gear progression systems were designed as expansion only features, and the team wants to be more open to implementing permanent RPG additions to the game and accepting that there will be some untidiness down the road as long as it's exciting for players.

Hey, they remembered this is supposed to be an RPG and have character advancement. CRAZY~!

[Marco]

There was a fairly meaty video presentation on 8.2 content today, and a bunch of additional videos by content creators who have had a chance to play the PTR and talk to developers.  wowhead has a ton of articles, and will have a ton more when the PTR comes up next week.  It's a pretty meaty patch and I'm not going to try to summarize.

According to Taliesin, we should expect the Azshara raid to come quickly on the heels of the 8.2 patch, not after a 6-7 week delay like most Legion and BfA patches.  This might mean Blizzard is taking feedback about time-gating to heart, or it could just mean that 8.2 is taking longer than they wanted.

One unanticipated change is "mount equipment".  As I understand it (some of this came from the Taliesin+Evitel video, and the level information came from a recent dev tweet):

* You will get a single per-character mount equipment slot at level 20 (as long as you have one character of level 100).
* There's a mount equipment to provide water walking, one to prevent dazing, and one to grant reduced fall speed.
* They will be created by crafting professions.
* Whichever one you slot in applies to all mounts (well, almost; see the last point).
* You can change it at any time, but the old one is destroyed.
* The water striders lose intrinsic water walking.
* If you own either water strider, you will get free inflatable mount shoes in the mail, and the ability to buy more of them from a vendor at low cost.
* The sky golem does not lose intrinsic herb harvesting, but doesn't benefit from mount equipment.  I imagine this also applies to the swimming mounts (sea horses, turtles, etc.) but I'm not certain.

There has been some backlash about this change due to incomplete information, but I don't think there are any nerfs relative to the current situation.  If you have a water strider, you can just put on the free inflatable mount shoes and lose nothing.

[**andius]

There has been some backlash about this change due to incomplete information, but I don't think there are any nerfs relative to the current situation.  If you have a water strider, you can just put on the free inflatable mount shoes and lose nothing.

Except for when you want to use one of the other effects you have to remove the the current equipment which destroys it. So they have turned something the mount has into a consumable, with an expected cost of around 1000 gold.

[Marco]

There has been some backlash about this change due to incomplete information, but I don't think there are any nerfs relative to the current situation.  If you have a water strider, you can just put on the free inflatable mount shoes and lose nothing.

Except for when you want to use one of the other effects you have to remove the the current equipment which destroys it.

How is that a nerf relative to the current situation?  There are no current mounts with intrinsic slowfall or daze protection, so if you slot in the shoes and never interact with the mount equipment slot again, you retain everything you have today (plus water walking on almost all of your non-strider mounts).

[**andius]

There has been some backlash about this change due to incomplete information, but I don't think there are any nerfs relative to the current situation.  If you have a water strider, you can just put on the free inflatable mount shoes and lose nothing.

Except for when you want to use one of the other effects you have to remove the the current equipment which destroys it.

How is that a nerf relative to the current situation?  There are no current mounts with intrinsic slowfall or daze protection, so if you slot in the shoes and never interact with the mount equipment slot again, you retain everything you have today (plus water walking on almost all of your non-strider mounts).

Did not mention anything about a nerf just what the backlash was about, if you want nerf then you could get daze protection from barding, as for slowfall when was the last time you got knocked off a flying mount, because I can not remember it happening.

[jsoh]

People will complain about _anything_. The whole mount situation seems like a curious hill to die on, what with all the other news in that dump...

... like outlaw rogues being nerfed into the ground. Suck it, TJ.

[Marco]

Did not mention anything about a nerf

You quoted me saying there isn't a nerf and started your statement with "Except..." so I took it as you disagreeing with there being no nerf.  Miscommunication, I guess.

if you want nerf then you could get daze protection from barding

I haven't seen any indication that consumable barding will stop working.

as for slowfall when was the last time you got knocked off a flying mount, because I can not remember it happening.

I believe the parachute is for when you accidentally ride a ground mount off of a cliff.  I don't expect it to be a popular option.  I suspect most people will use water walking except on DKs (who have Path of Frost), where they will use anti-daze if it's cheap to get.  DKs who mostly play blood might use the parachute because they already have the other two benefits.

[**andius]

These are just my troubling thoughts not arguing with anyone.

I reread the tool tip on the Saddlechute which is and I quote "Saddlechute: Equip in your mount equipment slot to install a emergency parachute that will deploy when dismounted high in the air.". If you accidentally ride a ground mount off of a cliff it is not going to help you. Riding of the cliff does not dismount you, you say mounted right up to the point you plow into the ground?

I get a nagging feeling when we get flight in this expansion they are also going to bring in something to cause you to be " dismounted high in the air". If this does turn out to be true and I am very much hoping I am wrong this is a very bad idea unless it is a better reason than just because.
Also currently if the game dismounts you because you flew into a non flight area you get a slow fall effect, is this going to be removed?

They are adding something new and fun to the game but not giving us the whole picture which is not a good way to inform the players what they are doing. Plus adding something does not mean you have to take something away.

[Marco]

 There is already a PvP item which dismounts people off flying mounts.  If you don't have war mode on I don't think there's a reason to expect anything new in that department.

I logged into the PTR and verified that my existing character there did receive a free water walking item in the mail.  Additional ones from the Anglers appear to cost 50g minus reputation discount.  I couldn't verify, but it looked like maybe only characters revered with Anglers would receive the item (or the equivalent for the red water strider).  That's an inconvenience worth complaining about to some extent--I don't think they should be making people fly out to Angler's Wharf to buy items and mail them to alts to put on. (ETA: nevermind, I copied a different character with no Anglers or garrison fishing rep and still got mailed the item.)

[Marco]

Blizzard announced that there will be a two-week delay between the launch of 8.2 and the opening of the new raid and dungeon.  No date in the announcement, but there's a parenthetical saying "date to-be-announced soon".

8.2 hit the PTR on April 16, so it had been on the PTR for seven weeks as of yesterday.  They have been doing raid testing, but I don't think they have yet done PTR testing of the heroic warfront or of mythic+ changes (they've talked about a trash percent rebalancing in addition to the new "beguiling" affix).  I would be a little surprised if the launch is next week, but June 18 seems like a possibility.  That would make this a nine-week PTR cycle.  (8.1 was on the PTR for twelve weeks, so it could be longer.)

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/battle-of-dazar-alor-raid-achievements-and-off-season-details/191868

[Piralyn]

I'd guess the 18th may be unlikely, not necessarily for PTR/testing time reasons, but rather that would mean the new season/raid would open during the week of 4th of July. I seem to recall them trying to avoid releasing major content drops/openings around a Holiday due to potentially not being in the office. who knows if that's the case.

Maybe the 25th, since that would put the major openings to be after 4th of July, but that also only leaves a small window to fix major patch problems before the holiday week anyway.

I predict April 2073.