Legion Beta

[Proof]

So although I personally have no clue when the beta will be released I just wanted to start this thread for anyone else likely to get an invite. I've gotten an invite to every beta since Cataclysm (not that this has anything to do with getting a legion invite but it stands to reason that it will be likely)

This is mostly a heads up but also an invite to anyone else in guild who gets an invite to join me in testing specs/rotations/stat priorities and what not before release.

The heads is for the people in AM i mostly hang around with. If/when I get an invite I will be spending the majority of my in game time on the beta so as to hit the ground running upon release.

The invite is for EVERYONE in AM that gets an invite to use this thread as a base for discussion so we can share with our guildies vital information that I'm sure everyone will need. I will do what I can to provide as many updates as possible but I will state now almost 100% of the information I will post will be in regards to shadow priests.

If I get a chance to try out other classes I will but for the most part I will leave that up to the mains of those classes to post their ideas/information here.

So please if you get into the beta use this thread to keep our guild informed!

[Mata]

Hi

[Proof]

Any info from those already in Alpha would be greatly appreciated btw!

[Mata]

I am happy to provide any info I can. I'm currently testing all the tanks available(still waiting for Brewmaster) and most of the melee dps classes. The only caster I have tested thoroughly is Ele Shaman. No Healers..

[Proof]

Awesome. Any changes to Blood Dk's you wanna post here?

I'm sure there are plenty of DK's that would love an idea of what they have to look forward to

Good and bad

[Mata]

Currently, Blood DK's and Prot Pally has changed the most mechanically. Not for the better imo. Blood was gutted dramatically, not only in rotation but also active CD's.

All runes are generic or Death Rune's, no more frost, blood, plague runes.

Outbreak has been replaced Death's Caress, a 30 yd ranged ability that cast a single disease, Blood Plague, at the cost of 1 rune.

Disease's can be spread several ways, through Bloodboil or Blood Strike(Heart Strike if talented) while mobs are under your Death and Decay.

Blood Boil now has 2 charges with a 6 sec recharge. You can not longer spam it. It does not cost runes or runic power.

Blood Strike,cost 1 rune, does single target dmg. It hit all targets that are under your DnD. You can replace it with the talent Heart Strike that hits 3 targets or all targets under your DnD. Both reduce targets hit movement speed.

Death Strike, cost runic power and heals you 30% of all damage taken in the last 7 sec. It does not heal for nearly as much as it does on live.

Marrowrend, cost 2 runes, single target dmg and adds bone shield, stacks up to 10.

Consumption, Artifact active ability, aoe damage with a huge heal.

That's pretty much it for your rotation without talents. I'll add more and go over talents when I have time.

[Leblue]

I'm (hopefully) going to be in alpha/beta soon when it comes live. In preparation for it I've been keeping a running log on all Brewmaster changes as well as some discussion points for it going forward on a community site called Chiburst here:

http://www.chiburst.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=408

[Mata]

Top favor tanks to play atm, Prot War, Bear, DH, Pally, DK

[Proof]

awesome leblue! Ty and thanks mata as well for that info.

BTW how is bonestorm working out for blood?

[Mata]

Bonestorm is really good for AoE situation. It scales linearly with the number of targets. So pretty much useless in single target situation.

[Mata]

copy/paste this from the Alpha forums on DK talents

"Talents
(In no particular order)

Foul Bulwark: This is a very problematic talent. It is both the most effective talent of its tier and actively makes Marrowrend a much more boring ability.

Not merely a health buffer, the 30% max HP boost from this talent translates to a sizable throughput increase. It represents 30% more healing from Blood Plague, 30% larger minimum Death Strike heals (which occur quite frequently, and has amounted to about a 20% increase to my average DS heal in practice), not to mention talents which heal based on max HP such as Consume Vitality, Rune Tap, Mark of Blood and Bonestorm.

When Foul Bulwark is slotted, it becomes very important for the tank to maintain 10 stacks of Bone Shield at all times. The gameplay depth stemming from Marrowrend reprioritization discussed earlier almost completely devolves to a mechanical “if Bone Shield <=7 then Marrowrend()” statement. It also makes Ossuary an unappealing talent, as it’s not worth the tradeoff to wait for Bone Shield to drop to 5 and take advantage of potential bonus stacks.

If this talent is to remain in the game, it either needs to provide its added max HP based on a different criteria, or be nerfed such that it is simply the “easy” option for players who prefer that Bone Shield management be as simple as possible. (The latter could be difficult, as Will of the Necropolis is an entirely passive talent.)

Ossuary: This talent could be considered the opposite of Foul Bulwark – it is relatively weak, but makes Marrowrend a more interesting ability.

As mentioned earlier, Ossuary turns Crimson Scourge procs into an opportunity to produce extra Bone Shield stacks. It encourages the tank to mix up his Marrowrend usage and avoid a rote routine to maximize efficiency and ultimately produce more self-healing.

It is considered weak for two reasons: The defensive benefit of extra Bone Shield stacks really only equates to bonus RP (since fewer Marrowrends produces more Blood Strikes), and the competing Rapid Decomposition talent is superior in this regard unless the tank is cleaving multiple targets with Heart Strike. Second, the talent is totally nonfunctional against single targets, which is a puzzling and seemingly arbitrary restriction.

Ossuary is a fun talent, and I really hope that there are adjustments made so that it becomes a viable choice at all times.

Rapid Decomposition: I believe this talent should become baseline. Three reasons:

1) Slotting this talent is the only means for Death and Decay to provide any sort of defensive benefit against single targets. Considering how much emphasis is placed on DnD during most pulls, it should not be relegated to an afterthought during bosses.
2) The defensive benefit this talent provides is much higher than Ossuary under most circumstances. Considering Ossuary is the more interesting talent, its competition should not be both more one-dimensional and more effective.
3) Rapid Decomposition on its own merits is pretty boring. It could be rolled into the DnD base description and no one would blink an eye.

Exhume: A good talent, similar to the Bone Shield timer that DKs have been familiar with for years. It is most useful either to start a pull with existing stacks or to use during high-damage periods when the DK can scant afford to spend runes on Marrowrend. My favorite of the tier.

Will of the Necropolis: A straightforward talent that will probably only be used when large burst damage is in play or total group healing throughput is being stretched to its limit. My biggest concern is that it seems a bit too binary; if a burst brings the tank to 36% it offers nothing, but if it would bring him to 34% it suddenly saves him a large chunk of health. I could see cases where gear upgrades actually penalize a tank with regards to this breakpoint.

Bloodworms: This talent has unfortunately taken a major step backwards from its initial alpha incarnation. For one, it’s based on overhealing. DS overheals are dramatically less common in Legion – there are some bosses where I have produced zero total overheal from all sources, and that’s just in Normal-mode instances. Second, the Bloodworms heal is applied after a static 6-second delay, where it’s likely to simply overheal again. Either the throughput needs to be high enough that a scattershot random heal has a decent chance to make a difference, or its heal needs to be delivered specifically when it’s most needed.

Just to put things in perspective… the last time we saw Bloodworms in-game, the heal provided was absolutely gargantuan, raid-wide and more likely to occur when the tank was at low health. Yet because of its random and inconsistent nature, it was only considered somewhat useful.

(continued)
Edited by Scorned on 3/6/2016 8:30 AM PST
#9
3/6/2016

Scorned
100 Undead Death Knight
Elitist Jerks
18450
Consume Vitality: Not a bad talent, acting as a nice supplement to Death Strike during high damage periods. Capable of significant single-target burst damage, especially when combined with temporary HP buffs like Vampiric Blood and Anti-Magic Barrier. However, it is not affected by Mastery and thus its relative potency may lag later in progression.

Heart Strike: A solid talent, and my favorite of the tier. Its added RP generation lends weight to proper Bone Shield management, as conserving runes with fewer Marrowrends ends up paying greater RP dividends. It is also a talent that strikes a nice balance in the way it benefits from facing multiple targets without scaling out of control.

Bonestorm: Potentially a good talent, but very much only worth using against multiple opponents. Both its offensive and survivability function scales linearly with number of targets, which results in wild shifts of effectiveness based on the encounter. Being compelled to take a talent in an AOE fight simply because it’s a dozen times more effective than usual, or being compelled to not take a talent because it’s useless in single-target, is not a design I enjoy.

Soulgorge: Personally, I don’t like this talent’s playstyle. Managing a DoT with a very specific window for harvesting will translate to simply writing a Weakaura that yells at me when Blood Plague is close to expiring and then pressing a button. Not much depth there. Not to mention that removing Blood Boil results in excessive GCD downtime, and that it suffers from the single-target/AOE talent segregation problem I described earlier with Bonestorm.

The larger issue is that, since Soulgorge removes the core AOE ability for both threat and survivability, it represents a huge trap talent for a novice DK. DnD alone isn’t often sufficient to maintain aggro unless the tank is tab-targeting and/or very purposefully stacking it with Blood Strikes, and the loss of both raw damage and self-healing from mass Blood Plague is fairly huge. A mediocre DK who specs into Soulgorge is a votekick waiting to happen.

Blood Mirror & Blood Beasts: I’m listing these talents together because they are remarkably similar in practice. Both abilities reduce incoming damage by 20%, inflict gradual damage to a single target over the course of their duration, and have lengthy cooldowns. They’re both pretty good talents individually and thematically (I’m a sucker for ICC boss abilities turned talents), but it would be better if there was more to differentiate why you’d choose one over the other.

(If I could throw in a brainstorm/wishlist, it would be to dramatically reduce both the cooldown and duration of Blood Mirror so it could be used more readily against predictable burst damage.)

Tremble Before Me: An excellent talent, both in terms of gameplay and raw effectiveness. It makes DnD a very high priority spell to use against susceptible enemies, and sometimes encourages tactical use to interrupt dangerous mob abilities.

As far as balance is concerned, it may be too good. Random 3-second stuns that end up proccing about every 18 seconds in practice translates to about 16% uptime on trash during my testing. If the talent does end up getting nerfed I would suggest not imposing diminishing returns, but rather make each proc a shorter duration. The initial proc frequently overlaps with other players’ AOE stuns and is essentially wasted; considering how important the initial DnD is on a pull, this is largely unavoidable.

Worth noting is that recent alpha builds have classified TBM procs as a standard fear, and thus break almost instantly upon damage. I presume this is a bug, as it currently makes the talent extremely underwhelming.

March of the Damned: A talent that serves to mitigate the DK’s biggest weakness, allowing him to shrug off mechanics that more mobile tanks could otherwise avoid. Fairly niche and with a significant cooldown, I am a little surprised that it cannot be used to break effects that are already in progress. It will probably be slotted for specific encounters nonetheless.

Tightening Grasp: This talent is lackluster when judged on its own merits, but I’m sure that there will be encounters where it is the only viable choice of the tier.

In general though, I hope that Gorefiend’s isn’t being treated overcautiously. While it has certainly been a very strong talent in 6.x, that is largely due to class stacking and using it to counter key mechanics every time they occur in a fight. If it can only be used against one-third or one-sixth of imp spawns in HFC, for example, it shifts from being an indispensable tool to a moderate convenience or a fallback contingency.

Rune Tap: An excellent timer. An on-demand heal that is as effective as you need it to be and rewards proactive rune conservation. No complaints.

(continued)
Edited by Scorned on 3/6/2016 8:31 AM PST
#10
3/6/2016

Scorned
100 Undead Death Knight
Elitist Jerks
18450
Mark of Blood: Another very good timer, providing excellent self-sufficiency while it’s active. However, there needs to be a couple safeguards on its behavior to ensure it isn’t wasted too easily. One, please ensure that there is a brief ICD on its trigger, so that a single raid-wide AOE does not instantly eat all 20 charges. Second, ensure that when multiple targets are hit by a single ability (like the aforementioned AOE) the DK is prioritized to receive the heal.

The cooldown on this timer is very significant and the competition on this talent tier is fierce, so it’s important that little idiosyncrasies don’t make this talent too finicky to bother with.

Purgatory: The old standby, which unfortunately still has a very annoying quirk. When the Purgatory buff triggers and allows the DK to fall to negative HP for 3 seconds, the buff will fade the instant the DK rises above zero HP. There have been at least a dozen cases since the talent was introduced where I have “died” causing Purgatory to proc, then had an HoT tick bring me up to a sliver of health, and then actually died to a minor source of damage, all within the space of a split second. The existence of a supposedly safe insurance talent that can randomly fail is immensely irritating.

This behavior has been tolerable only because Purgatory’s competing talents have been fairly lackluster and massive bursts of tank damage have been a common danger. In 7.0, neither of these are the case. If Purgatory is going to remain a viable choice outside of niche encounters, it needs to actually serve as a reliable fallback instead of only mostly serving as one.

There are different ways to fix this issue, but if Purgatory were to restore a small amount of health (say, 5%) upon fading, that would be enough to prevent the vast majority of deaths.

Spectral Deflection: I like these talents that add versatility to abilities and allow them to be used in cases where they would be otherwise useless. Spectral Deflection is a great example. Certainly niche, but will undoubtedly prove useful against particular mechanics.

Anti-Magic Barrier: As above, this allows AMS to be effectively used against any form of burst damage or as a means to enhance other abilities that scale based on max HP. No complaints.

Red Thirst: Kinda boring, actually. This takes an already great timer and makes it slightly better. Its impact is not likely to make a difference in survival when the tank needs to use VB, and it does not significantly expand the number of situations where VB should be used. Nothing wrong with the talent in a vacuum, but its competition is more interesting.

Notable bugs/Misc.:
Consumption’s effectiveness is being skewed by a rather large bug: If the DK uses the ability while his health is below 35%, the heal is greatly magnified by his RP pool without actually consuming any resources. This can result in absurdly large heals that reach into the millions.

Consumption also states that it always heals a minimum of 14% of the DK’s max health, but currently that minimum is actually 7%, like Death Strike.

As mentioned earlier, damage causes Tremble Before Me procs to break almost instantly, rendering the talent mostly non-functional in instances.

I haven’t given much analysis to the artifact traits, but I did notice one issue with the Rattling Bones trait. It states that “Marrowrend has a chance to generate an additional charge of Bone Shield”, however that chance is currently 100%.

Any possibility for a tooltip update on the Unending Thirst trait? I messed around with it briefly on the PVP realm and it seems to be healing for relatively small amounts (which is fortunate, because the original description sounds shockingly overpowered). It’s hard to get a grasp on how it functions in PVE with only fall damage and target dummies to work with.

Thanks for reading!"

[Proof]

Bumping this due to the possibility of an incoming beta

[Mata]

https://youtu.be/ErK_S-Yg7h8

Rather accurate video about the current state of Blood DK

[Proof]

TBH i'm super happy with blood dk ability pruning. I have so much shit on my bars for my DK. I hope the same goes for the dps specs because I've actually had to drop things from my bars I would like to have kept but didn't have room for.

[Willow]

So although I personally have no clue when the beta will be released I just wanted to start this thread for anyone else likely to get an invite. I've gotten an invite to every beta since Cataclysm (not that this has anything to do with getting a legion invite but it stands to reason that it will be likely)

This is mostly a heads up but also an invite to anyone else in guild who gets an invite to join me in testing specs/rotations/stat priorities and what not before release.

The heads is for the people in AM i mostly hang around with. If/when I get an invite I will be spending the majority of my in game time on the beta so as to hit the ground running upon release.

The invite is for EVERYONE in AM that gets an invite to use this thread as a base for discussion so we can share with our guildies vital information that I'm sure everyone will need. I will do what I can to provide as many updates as possible but I will state now almost 100% of the information I will post will be in regards to shadow priests.

If I get a chance to try out other classes I will but for the most part I will leave that up to the mains of those classes to post their ideas/information here.

So please if you get into the beta use this thread to keep our guild informed!

There is a very good chance my invite might end up in your mailbox! Just wanted to give you a heads up!