Liveblog of Watcher Legion Patch 7.1.5 and 7.2 Q&A

Ion “Watcher” Hazzikostas is live at 11:15am PT on WoW’s Twitter feed answering your questions about the upcoming 7.1.5 and 7.2 patches coming soon to the servers. We’re liveblogging it as it goes. You’ll have to refresh the page for updates. NOTE: Questions and answers are paraphrased.

11:15a – Patch 7.1.5 PTR early next week!

11:17a – Q: Will we see more 5-man raids like Karazhan? A: Yes, it’s been great. We’d love to build more challenging 5-man content. We already have that in the form of Mythics.

Lore then asks about the long run back to the final boss in case of wipe. A: We’d like to look at that in future dungeon builds to shorten it to around 90 seconds.

11:20a – Q: What’s your take on the reward vs risk on Trial of Valor? A: It could use some tweaking. It’s designed to be a continuation of progression from Emerald Nightmare. Rewards are undertuned, compared to Heroic Nightmare. This Tuesday all rewards in ToV will be bumped by 5 ilvls.

11:22a – Q: How are you going to address secondary stats? A: The single biggest systems overhaul in the patch. Looking at class/specs with biggest discrepencies. Where secondary stats can beat primary stats. Rings and necks designed to start low stats and grow over the expansion to avoid being too high by end of Legion, but has made jewelry scale to slow. Plan is to increase the rate of stat growth in patch to make ilvl more meaningful. And increase the contribution of secondary stats compared to primary stats. This way an ilvl upgrade ring or neck will be an upgrade even if its a secondary stat thats not ideal. All of this may not land in 7.1.5.

11:27a – Q: Can you reintroduce reforging to deal with stats players don’t want? A: It made sense when there were more secondary stats, but with less secondary stats it makes for less interesting choices, just min maxing numbers.

11:30a – Q: Class rework info? A: Reworking is too strong a word. Things we are tackling are talent choices, utility restoration, secondary stat weights, etc. These are just the beginning. We’ll see how they go and iterate them.

11:32a – Q: How will artifact appearances disappear after the next expansion launches? A: None of them will go away. Right now you can’t transmog anything to look like your artifact, but when next expansion launches there will be a limited time way to unlock the ability to transmon your next expansion weapon to look like your current artifact weapon.

11:34a – Q: Will bear and cat forms be available in the next expansion transmog artifact library? A: We’re not sure how it will work out. We’ll still working out the detail. It is our intention.

11:35a – Q: Will there be model revamps of the Water Elemental and Ghoul pets? A: Yes, ghoul coming very soon.

11:37a – Q: Will there be any new battlegrounds coming in Legion. A: Possibly, but none planned for 7.1.5 or 7.2. Just what we announced for brawls and arenas. We are actively discussing ideas for new ones and it’s just a matter of slotting them in to future patches. Also do we start rotating maps from a pool is a question we are considering.

11:39a – Q: Some Legendaries are game changing and some are not. Any changes? A: Not all Legendaries are designed to be the same otherwise we would put them on a vendor and everyone would pick the same. That being said, some low end Legendaries are getting buffed and some high end ones are getting nerfed in 7.1.5 (i.e. fire mage bracers). And some new ones are being introduced. All existing Legendaries are getting a 15 ilvl bump to 910 to be a guaranteed upgrade.

11:46a – Q: When Nighthold raid goes live in 7.2 you will be able to upgrade Legendaries, how will that effect their stats? A: There is a time grind process that hasn’t been nailed down yet. New Legendaries will have a higher ilvl cap.

11:48a – Q: Will we be able to equip more Legendaries (current max 2) in Patch 7.2? A: No, and that’s designed to keep an even playing field among players and to stop players from swapping out Legendaries for certain encounters.

11:49a – Q: Any plans to add features for the new social joining feature? A: Yes, there’s a hotfix coming to disable the sound for notifications.

11:50a – Q: Will Argus be a raid or a leveling experience? A: Definitely not a leveling experience. Outdoor zone, quest, raid and the captstone story of the Legion expansion. We were attacked, we defend our planet, and now we attack back.

11:51a – Q: What has the design team has learned from the implementation of the secrets in Legion? A: It was a very cool experience to watch the players to figure out Kosumuth, but some of the hidden artifact appearances got frustrating with their randomness. We dont like getting macros to check quest completion and mystery hunt. We do like to do more of these in the future, but more fun and more organic and more intuitive, but not overdo as this is not a core game feature for WoW. And there are a couple of small secrets left to be found, but nothing Kosumuth level.

11:56a – Q: After 7.2 drops and I create a new character should I spam run normal dungeons to gear up? A: Yes, but we will bump up the ilvl drops in normals to get them geared up faster.

11:57a – Q: With Mythic dungeons going up in difficulty in 7.2 will the Mythic-tied achievements be tweaked? A: No.

11:58a – Q: New pet content like Celestial Tournament? A: World Quests have been the content. Pet Battle dungeon were mentioned at BlizzCon and we’ll talk more about that in the future.

11:59a – Q: Timeline for Nighthold? A: Mid to late January for Nighthold raid opening. Tomb of Sargeras after that but the Tomb won’t be open the day 7.2 launches. The 7.2 story leads up to opening it up.(Editor: Think Isle of Quel Danas, where you unlocked the dungeon and raid while progressing through the outdoor zone.)

12:03p – Q: Where flight mounts have different colors per spec? A: Only in specific cases like Shadow Priests. Not so much with Hunters.

12:04p – Q: What happened to the Kirin Tor dailies? A: We made them less common, but not drastically less common. We may bump them up if they don’t show up enough.

12:05p – Q: Will we see more improvements in the Auction House UI? A: Yes, but not sure when. We are very disatisfied with the base UI. Download Auctionator for now. We should be able to buy partial stacks of consumables or reagents, for example.

12:07p – Q: Can you remove gold as a reward on bonus rolls? A: We would, but we have a coding problem. We’re working on it.

12:08p – Q: When will more specs be introduced to Class Trials? A: You can use any spec in Class Trials. On the gun ship tutorial leading into Broken Shore, that’s geared towards DPS specs to teach you how to quest.

12:08p – Q: When will more specs be introduced to Class Trials? A: You can use any spec in Class Trials. On the gun ship tutorial leading into Broken Shore, that’s geared towards DPS specs to teach you how to quest.

12:12p – Q: Are you planning to do something about Elemental Shaman? A: Yes, single target damage needs a bump, but you have three big abilities (Earth Shock, Artifact, Lava Shock) and they often all happen at once and require a redesign to work all together. We don’t have enough diversity in damage profiles in raids, such as AOE events in Emeral Nightmare. So Elemental Shaman don’t have a chance to shine. And that’s on the designers.

12:15p – Q: Brewmasters are an instant decline for PUGs. Thoughs? A: I don’t have a satisfying answer here. They are a really strong tank class, it’s a perception problem among the community. They smooth out incoming damage so much. That makes for a very high survival rate. They may always be sitting at half health, but never die (and never get topped off at full heath.) They can surivive things that no other tank can survive such as Odyn’s phase 3 spear ability in Trial of Valor. They are a high skill cap class, but the community needs to take a risk and see how good the class can be. The answer isn’t going to be “we’re going to buff them even more.” But we’re not sure on the solution to make them more desirable in the eyes of the community.

That’s it for this Q&A! The next one will be in December and they hope to do a Q&A every month.

Don’t forget, Patch 7.1.5 hits the PTR next week with class tweaks, secondary stat adjustments and more.