Patch 10.1 Release Developer Interview Roundup

With the release of patch 10.1 next week we’re getting a new wave of Developer Interviews with content creators.

Below is a roundup of new information:

Content Cadence

The goal is to keep doing .x.5 and .x.7 content patches. The goal of .x.5 patches is to add evergreen content and systems changes like heritage armor and class updates and the goal of .x.7 patches is to add catchup gear and a prologue to the next major story beat. (Maximum)

Gear/Itemization

The Onyx Annulet missed its goal and they will look at it later in the patch 10.1 cycle. They don’t want to nerf it too quickly. (Maximum)
The team is open to suggestions for improving the Great Vault (Maximum)

Classes

There is no third spec for Evoker in 10.1 but anything is possible in the future (MrGM)
The process to tune classes hasn’t changed much. However the frequency is the thing that has changed. They review the numbers on a weekly basis now. (Maximum)
One tuning philosophy has changed is that they now want to maintain the order of best specs. If one spec is by far the best they will nerf it but to a point that they are still one of the best. (Maximum)
If new tier set bonuses are solving core problems a spec has then they are open to putting it into the talent tree. An example of this is the Evoker instant living flame (Maximum)

Dungeons/Mythic+/Raiding

The new mega dungeon’s theme in 10.1.5 was teased with the fact that mega dungeons give the team a chance to make a different turn in the story from the expansion’s main storyline to explore something different. (MrGM)
They feel 8 dungeons in the Mythic+ dungeon pool in each season is a good number (Maximum)
They are not closing the door on seasonal affixes but there are so many things changing upcoming season that they did not think it was needed for season 2 (Maximum)
The encounter team is open to hearing feedback about bosses needing to be adjusted to no longer parry when melee are required to stand in front of the boss. However they will not change the core system of parrying (Maximum)

Cross Faction Gameplay

They will continue breaking down barriers. Things like world content and queued LFG content are things they have heard feedback on. They don’t want faction choice to be a barrier to play with friends but they do want to want to keep some semblance of Alliance vs Horde. The next step is likely queued content when you queue with a full group of friends. (MrGM)

Default nameplates are often discussed for a next step in improving the UI (Maximum)

PTR

Timewalking

BfA timewalking is still on the menu in the future (MrGM)
They would still like to find a way to make timewalking expand to outdoor world content (MrGM)
They recognise that having to queue for timewalking raids causes issues and would like to know from the community how they would feel if a raid was timewalking only on the relevant timewalking week. This means players would not be able to go to the low level version of it in that week. (MrGM)

Legacy Content

Siege of Orgrimmar skip is something they’ll discuss with the team again (MrGM)
A tuning pass to solo BfA raiding content is likely to happen in 10.1.5 (MrGM)
They need more conversations to turn Warfronts into solo’able content given the way they were built. (MrGM)
A Shadowlands LFR queue npc will also likely be added in 10.1.5 (MrGM)

Misc

They don’t have immediate plans to make legacy reps account-wide but they hear the feedback about it holding players back when switching characters (MrGM)
While not in Dragonflight, they intend to eventually update the outdated guild Tabard system. (MrGM)
The slow updates on different character customisations will continue throughout Dragonflight (MrGM)
An update to the bank/reagentbank is not planned for the shortterm in Dragonflight but they are actively talking about updating it for a future expansion (MrGM)