The podcast is back this week, we cover the upcoming changes in patch 6.2.3: Cataclysm Timewalkers and Valor points. We also speculate about what we could expect from Blizzcon next week.
Welcome to the WoW Weekly Design Corner! In this editorial series I (Mezzy) look at different parts of WoW and see how I would design the next new thing, or perhaps improve upon it. The following designs and mock content are NOT official content.
You can find the introduction, the lore and the first wing of the raid instance here: Design Corner: Time-Lost Halls of Karazhan Part 1
In the first wing of the raid instance we found ourselves in The Courtyard, where a variety of beats and demons resided that had come in through the portal from Draenor to the zone or were already occupants of this alternate karazhan created by the distortion in time and space.
The second wing is the Time-Lost Halls itself. The main servants and occupants live here and just go about their business not realizing they shouldn’t exist in this pocket of time and space.
In designing this second wing I went for a bit more of a simplistic approach. The first boss is designed with the design philosophy of current raid bosses, the other two have been held back in that regard a bit. Not every boss needs a million different abilities and environmental factors.
Each boss description below (in the tabs) has a boss model, design notes with things such as ability descriptions and dungeon journal entries! Let me know in the comments what you think of this next wing in this self-designed raid instance.
Would you enjoy fighting against them? What would you like to see in a raid instance? And what do you think of modern raid design? Are there too many abilities and mechanics per boss fight? Or has it been dialed back enough? (Siege of Orgrimmar vs Tier 17 vs Hellfire Citadel)
Arcanus
Arcanus, Watcher of the Halls was created by the Battlemage Grandfurth while experimenting with arcane magic. Arcanus now patrols the halls and keeps order. He will not react kindly to unknown visitors.
Encounter description and design notes:
- The ground of the encounter area is divided up into tiles, which make up 5 rows.
- An array of arcane related abilities have to be dealt with:
- Arcane Trap – Traps 2 random players, rooting them in place for 10 seconds. Player is immune to Arcane Beam and Arcane Pillar when trapped.
- Mythic only: Duration reduced by 5 seconds. Will jump to another player when it expires. Player is not immune to Arcane Pillar.
- Arcane beam- Travels around the room, has to be jumped over
- Arcane Explosion – puts a debuff on random players. This will pulse AoE damage to anyone within 8 yards. After 8 seconds the target and anyone within 8 yards will be thrown into the air. Only the debuffed player will receive a slow fall. Instantly kills those trapped in an Arcane Trap.
- Arcane Pillar
- Tiles on the ground will light up and arcane energies will explode on that tile after 2.5 seconds. Players that get hit will take a big spike of damage and take 50% increased arcane damage for 30 seconds.
- Mythic only: 3 entire rows at a time will light up at a time
- Arcane Empowered – Arcanus’s auto attacks deal arcane damage
- Arcane Malady – Increases arcane damage taken by 20%
- Arcane Trap – Traps 2 random players, rooting them in place for 10 seconds. Player is immune to Arcane Beam and Arcane Pillar when trapped.
- Encounter Design Goals/Intentions:
- Make the players deal with movement and mechanics, which are somewhat more random than other encounters.
- On mythic mode a lot more coordination will be required. The Arcane trap debuff can be passed on to another player within 30 yards by using the extra action button. Especially Arcane Pillar will require this coordination.
Quartermaster Modir
Quartermaster Modir spends his days training those that wish to become his disciple in the art of combat. Being in a place pulsing with magic such as the Time-Lost Halls has given him unhuman strength. Rumor has it he can even throw swords as if they were knives.
Encounter description and design notes:
- Broadsword – The Quartermaster’s attacks hit the closest person next to the target for 50% of the damage.Sunder Armor – Reduces the target’s armor by 5%.
- Expose Weakness – The Quartermaster throws knives at his targets exposing their Weaknesses. After 4 seconds he casts Throw Sword on those targets.
- Throw Sword – Modir throws a sword at the player, if it hits them it will deal 85% of their maximum health as damage to them.
- Mythic only: it will kill them if the sword hits them.
- Shattering leap – Quartermaster jumps to a player’s location dealing 200k physical damage to anyone within 8 yards.
- Whirlwind – Modir deals 80k damage to every player every second for 6 seconds.
- Notes:
- The sword from Throw Sword can be intercepted by a player standing in between the boss and player
- The amount of expose weakness targets increases as more people are in the raid, 3 targets at 20man
- This is mainly a dps and healing check, keeping away from gimmicks in this fight. The damage numbers in the journal likely need to be increased.
Grandfurth
Having access to huge amounts of magical power, Battlemage Grandfurth has trained himself to overcome the weaknesses of being a caster. He has infused himself with the raw power used in magic to strengthen his physical body. This of course means that other than physical attacks, his magic is not to be messed with. Note: Since the creation of the dungeon journal entry, a new ability has been added. Brute force will not show up in the journal image.
- Burn Essence – Stacking debuff on targeted player, deals 60k arcane damage every 3 seconds per stack.
- Empowered Staff – Grandfurth’s staff is empowered to hit like a heavy mace.
- Brute Force – Grandfurth slams his staff against the target dealing 600k physical damage.
- Incinerate – Deals 180k fire damage to the targeted player and leaves a debuff on the player dealing 50k fire damage every 3 seconds.
- Wall of Ice – Grandfurth slices at the target, throwing a wall of ice dealing 300k frost damage to anyone that gets hit by it.
- Summon Arcane Elemental – Summons 2 Arcane Elementals
- Arcane Elemental
- Unstable Magic – While the Arcane Elemental lives it will deal 30k arcane damage every second to every player.
- Arcane Malady (mythic only) – Every Pulsing Arcane also gives the stacking Arcane Malady debuff, increasing magic damage taken by 2%.
- Arcane Elemental
- Frostfire Bolt – Deals 300k frostfire damage to the target. Interruptable.
- Encounter notes:
- The main goal is to prevent getting hit by as many abilities as possible.
- Frostfire Bolt can be interrupted.
- Wall of Ice can be dodged.
- Cooldowns will have to be used for Brute Force.
- At the same time dps have to kill the elementals as quickly as possible to reduce the damage on the raid as a whole.
- If the abilities aren’t dealt with properly the raidgroup is going to have a nasty time.
- The main goal is to prevent getting hit by as many abilities as possible.
Hey guys I’m Mezzy from WoW Weekly and today we’ll be taking a look at Mythic Kormrok in Hellfire Citadel. In this video we assume that you know the heroic mechanics, if you don’t, check out our heroic guide in the annotation.
For this fight you will want to use 2 tanks, 3-4 healers and 16-17 dps.
As usual on mythic he has more health and does more damage. Empowered runes will now spawn 6 runes and Fel Outpouring spawns a lot more waves of goo. On top of that when he soaks a pool the ability of that pool will be empowered for 4 casts instead of 3. You will want a healing cooldown rotation for both the hands and pounds.
The only new mechanic is Splash. When Kormrok jumps into a pool, swirls will spawn on the floor. If you stand in a swirl you will prevent that piece of floor from being covered in goo. So that means you’ll be able to soak up 20 swirls, which limits your movement throughout the encounter.
To organize your group you will want to download the Exorsus Raid Tools addon, if you hadn’t already for the previous tier. Because just like on Kromog in Blackrock Foundry, the addon allows you to set who should stand where for Kormrok. And just like on Kromog, when Kormrok jumps you will get an arrow telling you where to move to.
You will need to set the soaking positions for each of the 3 pools. (See video for images)
– For the green pool you will want to soak a road to one of the pools for the hands to travel through.
– For the orange pool you will want to create as big a circle as possible.
– For the purple pool you will want to create a road towards one of the walls for your tanks to be swatted to.
Now let’s get to the practical side of things.. You’ll be dealing with the abilities somewhat differently on mythic.
First off you’ll want to follow a different empowerment order. You’ll want to go green > orange > purple on this encounter. Secondly due to the amount and combination of abilities once he jumps to the purple pool, Kormrok should nearly be dead. You want to aim for a kill by the 5 minute mark.
Because of this, the dps requirement can be higher than you’ve been used to so far in mythic Hellfire Citadel. You will want to use the legendary ring on the first and third sets of hands and only have those with high AoE and the ring to AoE the hands down to maximize the output of the ring’s damage on Kormrok himself.
As far as other positions go we set up 3 markers. A red marker inbetween the middle and the orange pool, a green marker on right of it and a moon marker on the left of it. We use the red marker for the loose stacking for the hands. Really don’t be stacked up on top of each other for it on mythic, because it will kill you.
The other part of this fight prone to mistakes are the runes. The first set won’t be empowered and anyonen with cooldowns can and should get rid of them.
The empowered runes are a different story though. On mythic we have our 2 rogues deal with the empowered runes. We assign a healer to each of the rogues to prevent them from dieing. The two green and moon markers are guidelines for our rogues.
You’ll want each rogue to make half a circle to the other side of the room, dealing with the runes. This way the rogues should meet up in the middle on the other side to take care of the empowered runes. The rogues start at cross and then ones moves towards green and the other towards moon.
If you don’t have 2 rogues you can have everyone with cooldowns move the runes towards the middle and let them phase out that way.
The fel outpouring remains the same other than the increased amount of waves of goo, so continue to dodge those and be careful when you get pound during the outpouring.
As a final note, use heroism on the first set of hands. You don’t want to use it while Kormrok is jumping.
If you liked this raiding guide please comment, subscribe and click on the like button to help us out. If you would like to keep up with when new videos come out, but you don’t have a youtube account, you can also follow us on twitter and facebook at twitter.com/bbmezzy or facebook.com/wowweekly. Also be sure to check out our written content on our website wowweekly.net. For now I’m Mezzy and I’ll see you again next time.
Previous Design Corner Articles:
Design Corner: Future WoW World Content Design
Design Corner: Time-Lost Halls of Karazhan Part 1
Design Corner: Improving the Garrison in 6.1
Mythic Dungeons and how they’d fit in the current system
Welcome to the WoW Weekly Design Corner! In this editorial series I (Mezzy) look at different parts of WoW and see how I would design the next new thing, or perhaps improve upon it. Keep in mind that this is an editorial/article and the following designs are NOT official content. Today we’ll be taking a look at class specializations within WoW.
Now this is an idea that I’ve been mulling on for many months and you might have heard parts of it on our podcast. Adding to that the recent announcement that in WoW: Legion we’re going to see a diversification of existing specs, this was the right time to flesh out the idea and write it down.
An issue that we’ve had for a while now is that specializations (specs) for some classes have become so similar due to homogenization, while others have remained similar (for the most part) through multiple expansions. If you’ve played the game a long time that could make it feel stale, and while you could reroll to another class to get a new(er) game experience you would still feel the loss of progression you put into your character.
To add some new life to the classes themselves Master Specializations could be added to the game. Now keep in mind that it is unlikely that it would be added on a mass scale due to the work of tuning it would bring to the table, but we’ll disregard that moving forward to take a look at the full idea/fantasy.
What are Master Specializations?
Master specs are specs outside of the (usually 3) regular specs for players to play their class in a completely different role. To prevent new players from getting overwhelmed, unlocking these specializations could be done through a class quest chain where in you interact with some npcs of your class who think outside the box. A few examples, some of which we’ll flesh out below:
- A hunter could become a tank, drawing on the power of their pet
- A hunter could become a healer, instead of using the elements to damage npcs they can use the elements to heal players
- A mage could become a melee dps or tank (think of the battlemage in Dragon Age: Origins)
- A shaman could get a support spec, in which totems are central to the gameplay to boost the performance of other players
- A rogue could get a ranged dps spec focused on poisons and bleeds, but also find weaknesses increasing damage taken by the enemy by 5% for the entire group
- A priest could get a support spec that focuses on reducing damage taken and shortening debuff durations instead of absorbs/heals
A word on the possibility of a new support role
Adding a support role would present some challenges for the community to solve. How would a support player stack up compared to a healer or dps? Are they worth the raid spot? We love our damage meters, it would suck not to see the damage we reduced or the damage we added show up on our record in the meters!
When it comes to the meters, they are not everything. As a raid leader I find myself having to say over and over, tactics over numbers. Killing the boss is the goal. Would you not still be a vital part of the team if your strength of the earth totem increased everyone’s damage by 5% for 8 seconds every 30 seconds? Imagine having that in a fight where adds spawn regularly (and they do in a lot of fights these days). A potentially dangerous mob that could wipe your raid would die much quicker because of you being able to increase everyone’s damage.
Or imagine that you could stand in a pillar of light every 30 seconds for 5 seconds to reduce your damage taken by 5% on a fight that has regular raid wide AoE. Also not uncommon these days.
On top of that, the community could be helped out by blizzard by having a new combat log event being created that says how much damage or healing (or damage reduced) the support role ability provided. Addon developers could work with that, update their addons and then they would be able to compare support playing players to each other.
There are problems with adding a support role, but they’re problems that can be solved. Adding on top of that, Master Specializations are mean to give you an alternate gameplay style. You can always choose not to play it and play one of the normal 3 (or 2 or 4) specs as you always have!
Going into detail on a few masters specs
Given that I play a hunter myself, I’ll go into more detail on 2 different hunter master spec ideas, and 1 priest master spec. We now know that Survival hunters will become a melee spec in Legion, but when originally coming up with the concept it made more sense to me to make Beastmastery a melee spec. The numbers on the spells are obviously not final, but a representation of how the master spec could function.
Beastmaster Tank Hunter
In the master spec version of Beastmastery, the hunter takes on the Aspect of the Bear. The hunter is able to draw power from their pet and depending on the pet that the hunter is using they will have different abilities/cooldowns. The master beastmaster would tank as a regular melee tank and use melee weapons. In order to be nimble the master beastmaster prefers to use 2 one-handed weapons.
Aspect of the Bear: Increases health and armor by 20% and threat generation by 100%. The hunter gains bonuses to their abilities based on the pet they have active.
Toughness (passive): Combat hardens the hunter, every time the hunter deals a critical hit he gains a stack of Toughness. Max 30 stacks.
Wild Reflexes (Active Mitigation): Consumes Toughness. The hunter gains 30% chance to dodge attacks. Spells can also be dodged, but this will reduce the damage taken by spell by 15%. Lasts 0.5 seconds per stack of Toughness consumed.
Unbreakable Bond (passive): The hunter’s pet will share 3% of the physical damage the hunter takes. If a magic based pet is active it will share magical damage instead.
Sacrificial Bond: The hunter’s pet feels the pain of the hunter and shares 20% of the damage taken for 10 seconds. Unbreakable bond’s damage percentage goes up to 5% for the duration of Sacrificial Bond. 2 minute cooldown.
The master beastmaster’s kit would of course be rounded out with a taunt, interrupts and damage dealing abilities.
Survival Healing Hunter
In the master spec version of Survival, the hunter infuses his arrows with the elements with the intent to heal instead of deal damage. There are 3 options this spec could take in regard to pets.
– The pet could attack enemies as they do now, providing some extra dps to the raid.
– The pet could act as a support element, intercepting hits of damage from other players, reducing the amount of damage some players take.
– A new pet family, similar to the spirit beast, could be created to provide the master survivalist with pet that heals those with lower health.
The master survival hunter can have most of their current spells (pre-legion) converted into healing spells. Black Arrow would be on a shorter cooldown, allowing the master survivalist to become a HoT-oriented healer. The kit would need to be rounded out with a few cooldowns.
Regenerative Shot: Reduces the target’s damage taken by 30% and increases the healing of your healing over time spells on the target by 20% for 6 seconds. 2,5 minute cooldown.
Volley: Shoot a volley of nature infused arrows to the targeted area. Channel for x amount of healing every 1 second for 5 seconds.
Aspect of the Viper: Attacking an enemy npc for 3 seconds will give you x amount of spirit for 3 seconds.
“Cleric” Support Priest
A priest who uses the Cleric master spec infuses the light into beneficial spells for their group, increasing the chance of success in fights.
Pillar of Light: Guide the light to the targeted location for 5 seconds. Every player standing in the pillar will take 5% less damage. 30 second cooldown.
Repel Malady: The duration of any debuffs the target gains in the next 8 seconds will be reduced by 20%.
Infuse Light: Channel the light onto your target, reducing their magical damage taken by 5%. Channel lasts up to 8 seconds.
Power of the Naaru: Increases the effectiveness of the target’s active mitigation for 8 seconds. Also reduces their damage taken from all sources by 30%. 2 minute cooldown.
It’s now been announced discipline is moving towards atonement play in Legion, but my idea had been to have the Cleric have atonement as well for filler spells, to contribute to both damage and healing in this new support role.
Some final remarks
These are just a few examples of possible ways classes could play a different style to prevent it from getting stale. Some classes have more possibilities than others due to their fantasy/lore background giving more opportunities to work with. Nevertheless, this is one addition I’d love to see in WoW. Hopefully the class diversification will offer some new play as well.
A counter argument to not implementing the master specs could be that it would mean if a master spec x is so good, but plays much differently players would not appreciate it. However that seems to be a risk worth taking as the complete SV spec is being changed in such a manner in Legion already.
And lastly to point out by giving pure dps classes a chance at a different role, they could help reduce the queue timers for looking for group tools.
What do you think of the Master Specialization idea? What master spec would you like to see be added to which class? Do you think a support role would work out? Let me know in the comments! Be sure to follow WoW Weekly’s social media in the side bar on the right!
This week in the podcast we talk about the first information set we got about WoW: Legion. We cover a whole range of subjects this time including Artifact Weapons, Class Order Halls, the different lore story threads and the “shocking and surprising” events that will occur on the Broken Shore.
In the past 2 days more dev interviews have taken place, below is the new information that we’ve obtained per interview:
- In 7.0 they want to have the story develop in the outdoor world gameplay at level 110.
- We will get a 12th character slot.
- You can transmog over your Artifact weapon if you want to.
- The role of Illidan is something for the player to discover. The Illidan storyline will carry through the entire expansion.
- Many of the social interaction improvements are still just ideas at the moment. An example is when you and your friend are seperatly queued for the same thing, you get a pop up asking if you would like to join your friend.
- It might be possible to put moose horns on your tauren in the future, but for now there are no plans for it.
- Raiding has worked out well for Warlords, but they want to improve loot and more specifically personal loot in Legion.
- They do not know yet what type of quality the Artifact weapon will be. They have multiple ideas.
- There will be no catch up mechanics for Artifacts for alts.
- There might be a catch up mechanic for Artifacts of your different specs.
- They might not add mythic dungeons at the start of Legion.
- Challenge modes might not be added in legion. They do like them, but want to make them more accessible.
- With the demon hunter being a leather user there will now be 4 leather users and 2 mail users (in terms of classes). They feel that this is not a real problem due to the addition of personal loot. In organized raiding, the set pieces aren’t shared by all leather users so only bracers, belt and boots are left. Additionally, from a fantasy perspective it’s only right that they use leather.
- The demon hunter will get a new weapon type: the glaive. This will work out with the Artifacts for this expansion, but in future expansions they might have to go to dual wielding the existing weapon types.
- If they could go back in time perhaps rogues would have only 2 specs.
- Discipline will be focused on the atonement mechanic. They will deal damage to heal players. They’ll be more 50% damage, 50% healing compared to holy which is 100% healing.
- The expansion after Legion is already being planned.
- Legion will be released next year.
- They are not sure how Dalaran will be handled in terms of Horde vs Alliance areas.
- They do not base their decisions on the subscriber numbers. They learn lessons from what they felt they did wrong.
- They do not know what their patch plans are going to be yet for Legion.
- 6.1 was not named correctly
- Legion will offer a large content spectrum, they want to improve the endgame experience.
- They want the transmog system to be more easy to use. It should be more like a dressing room and you can see what you can still unlock.
- They find it interesting that some players don’t want Sylvanas to end up as a raid boss.
- The hunter changes will represent the most significant class changes.
- Despite the feeling that some players have that so many lore threads are being tied together in Legion, they are confident that they will have plenty of ideas for future expansions.
- While Artifacts can be transmogged into old weapons, old weapons can not be transmogged into the Artifacts.
- The new PvP system will allow them to make the game better. (PvP vs PvE tuning)