Another Dev Q&A with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas is about to take place over on the Warcraft Twitch channel. We’ll be liveblogging the answers here!
Azerite
- The goal of the azerite changes with the 5th azerite trait ring coming up in season 2 is more spec customization
- You’ll have access to multiple spec specific traits with the 5th ring changes in patch 8.1
- It would be simpler for a player to be able to choose Azerite traits on a piece of Azerite Gear per spec, like tier gear used to change to the spec bonuses, however tier gear was an exception. Just like ring and trinkets, you want to have unique Azerite gear pieces for each spec if you want the specialized traits. There is also the respeccing option to change traits when you change spec. You can always choose the generic bonuses to use in all specs, the difference between traits is only a few % in terms of power. The player has the choice to choose how they want to play and how far they want to go with continuous optimization.
- For patch 8.1 they’re looking at resetting the azerite respec costs for all players during big azerite trait balance patches
- All azerite items, including from mythic+, will get the 5th ring
- The devs are not happy with how little azerite gear drops from mythic+ because of it only being from the weekly chest, they are looking for a middleground solution for this.
- Azerite traits that do not describe what they do, will do so in the next patch. You should not have to consult 3rd party sites to understand what an azerite trait does.
- Some current azerite traits that were less successful will be retired in 8.1.
Classes
- Tank balance is something the team is looking at. Monks and DKs are a bit too strong, but other weaker classes are also being looked at. A big part of a tank’s role is to organize the battle field, toolkits are also being looked at.
- Resto shamans are extremely strong at AoE, not so much when people are spread out and single target healing is needed. The numbers and a few talents are being looked at. At the same time the very strong healing specs such as disc priests are being looked at so that the disparity between healers is less big.
- They are keeping an eye on the high burst metagame of the current arena PvP meta. Unholy Death Knights, Shadow Priests and Afflication warlocks will be receiving some changes on the PTR.
Warfronts
- The warfronts will run in 2 cycles to complement each other. When 8.1 launches the Alliance will be able to attack in Darkshore right away, they will not need to contribute resources first.
- You cannot group with raid groups for warfronts because the pacing with a full organized group made the experience less fun. They are looking at a new mode for warfronts that are tuned around fully organized groups.
Allied Races
- There are currently no plans to look at Death Knights for allied races, they will look at it in the future
- They intend to double the amount of rep you get from old world quests to help speed up the time you need to unlock Legion allied races
Raiding
- They’re looking at changing the name of the new raid to Battle of Dazar’Alor
- They’re looking at making the kill order of the 9 bosses for Alliance and Horde the same, so in practice boss 9 may be the same boss but there might be some differences between Horde and Alliance which could spark a debate over the World First race
- Raid trinkets should be balanced better, they should be more interesting and better budgeted compared to trinkets from World Quests
- They’re looking at more unique rewards from raiding, they don’t believe tier sets made a big impact on that. For a long time you’ve been able to PuG to piece together tier sets in the first few weeks of a raid’s release.
Other
- For Island Expeditions they’re looking to add a lot more unique objectives and events for island Expeditions. An example for the next patch is that you’ll be able to place an azerite extractor at a certain point that will give you a steady poor of azerite over the entire time you’re on the island. The opposing faction will be able to steal this away from you.
- In RP realms old zones will not be sharded, however in the new realms sharding is used for performance and gameplay reasons. This also functioned as such in Legion.
- Changes to Group Finder for mythic+ are still in the works.
- Alt friendliness has been discussed a lot for 8.1. For the War Campaign quest completion, significant amounts of reputation will be rewarded. Horde and Alliance assaults will be ways to level alts up as well. They are also looking at a Bind on Account item to unlock all flight paths. And more is planned!