S9 Ch.2 Q&A Answers

Q&As typically happen after the release of a major content video. The following are the questions and answers that you all asked after the S9 Chapter 2 video:

Is anything coming for PvPers?

There are more PvP updates coming that didn't make it for the initial chapter 2 release. There are some battlegrounds and arenas in the works that we’ll post teasers for soon as well.

How noticeable will the Chaotic Link on Manastorm Bosses be related to how much trash you have killed? 

The aura is a number of stacks and is se tup to be ~50% of the trash between you and the boss. It is about 25%~ health per stack and 10% damage atm, and that will likely change as we see more gameplay.

On PTR there is a built-in Raid UI interface similar to the Compact Raid Frames add-on. Will we see that later in Chapter 2?

Gameplan is to get it in for chapter 2. There are several things like this that didn't make it into either the article or the video

Anything about making KOTE easier to build?

ALL builds should be easier to build thanks to:

• New skillcard slots
• Skillcard weighting so you'll see new cards more often
• More synergy rolls

Will more abilities and talents than the one listed be coming to Chapter 2?

Not for this release! There will be a few other balance changes. The new talents and abilities were all covered.

When will we be able to play with these new abilities/talents?

The vast majority of the updates will be live by the 3rd. Monday-Tuesday the core merge will begin to do all the technical stuff, then features will be unlocked from there as they are tested and confirmed working as ascended.

Will Synergy Roll procs be made visible? 

No plans to do this currently. The majority of your rolls have been and are still going to be 100% random. Synergy Rolls just help steer your build in the right direction. 

As noted in the article, these synergy rolls are not devs making builds for you. It is just things that benefit from one another, if a talent benefits from an ability or vice versa it is a synergy.

Any plans to expand the Cases of Fortune you receive for Battlegrounds?

Yes! You also get scrolls for losses if the losing team actually participated and had a close match. So you won't walk out of a 1500/1600 Arathi Basin with no rewards. 

Will longer Battlegrounds award more Scrolls of Fortune?

Battleground Scroll of Fortune rewards have been generally buffed.

Why isn’t the Manastorm available on Area 52?

It wasn't where it needed to be. If the feedback on these updates to it are better, then the next iteration of it is adapting it for TBC!

Will cases of fortune stay in your inventory come Chapter 2?

Yes! 

Which of the updates in this article are coming to Area 52?

• Tamable Treants
• Trap Launcher
• Mythic+ Updates
• New raid frame stuff
• The new keybinding features we teased
• The updates to vanilla dungeon mechanics
• All of the talent changes listed in the classless article and the balance article where they are specified
• Prestige Rewards (Not as relevant for a52 ofc)

These are all coming with chapter 2 in the same week. The big feature in sight next is the Manastorm for TBC.

Will any of the new spells be added to A52?

Yeah! They are mentioned in the article, and more will likely be adapted to enchants overtime too

Where are invasions?

There was a test run for invasions, and they were super laggy. This is likely because there was a dozen people with 5000 wild imps each, and this was causing server lag and basically breaking the game. There are some optimizations in the works, and there will be another test drive after the imp pruning balance changes.

How close are you to bringing the new talents and abilities to A52? Os balancing them still something that will be done? Has Elune Chapter 1 given you new insights to how they all fit together? 

This will likely be tested in a League in the future to try them out before bringing them to Area 52, the idea is to make sure the A52 pop actually wants it and it is a net improvement. 

For freepick, the biggest thing that comes to mind that clearly has to change is being able to use multiple of the same ability effected by the same modifiers: i.e. having 3 variations of Corruption in the same build. It basically diminishes the ability to have a bigger variety of builds, and forces you to stack up the same ability. 

Your talents for corruption go a lot further when you have 3 corruptions to benefit from them, and that ends up making other things less viable, and there's really no clear, clean path to fix that.

Any idea when the first batch of the new changes will come out? 

Core merge monday-tuesday for the technical stuff, then expect some updates over the week with the bulk of it being deployed on the 3rd.

How does Chapter 2 differ from Chapter 1?

Chapters are larger sets of updates to realms that occur a few times throughout a Season. You'll continue to play on your same character.

Any chance of the new manastorms having puzzle bosses so it isn't a DPS rush?

Not exactly puzzles, but there are some bigger maps though that have more mechanics and are more involved. 

The goal of manastorm and broader PvE changes was to add more mechanical depth and strategy to the base gamemode rather than just piling up more and more affixes. A lot of spells and mechanics creatures have been retuned to matter a lot more, if they are avoidable, you're going to need to avoid them.

These now have a reward multiplier as well so it doesn't feel bad to get a longer map. You'll get extra rewards for time spent

Will doing Raid Trials above level 10 award additional Scrolls of Fortune?

Yes, the UI change just wasn't in for the video.

When will updates to Synergy Rolls be in game so I can use my hoarded Scrolls?

An announcement will go out on the Discord when these are live! The goal is to have the vast majority of updates by the 3rd. We’ll know more after Monday maintenance.

Where are the new Arenas promised to PvP players?

 With the arenas, we ran into quality assurance problems. They had too many unforeseen issues that we did not have the talent to fix at the time. There is such little tolerance for mapping quality issues in a competitive arena space.

Recently, the team expanded to bring on some new guys with much more robust mapping skillsets, We’ll have some teasers for this this week.

Are synergy rolls just while leveling?

Synergy Rolls are all the time, forever. They never stop happening. They occur both while leveling and at end-game.

Is there a point where a Synergy Rolls becomes a mathematical guarantee?

Yes. Every roll you make has a chance to get a Synergy Roll, and they accumulate that chance until you are guaranteed to get one.

Any benefits to restarting at lvl 1 on Manastorm to get rewards or just continue to find the treasure and card  guy? So if we have a 1 in 10 (guessing at the number of clones) of getting the fortune or talents drops?

The goal with this round of updates was to do more to keep people in their sweet spot for difficulty. 

The intent with manastorm is to push to the higher levels that you're capable of doing, so treasure keepers, greedy goblins, scroll amounts, and such have their chance g up the deeper you go into the manastorm to make sure you're not forced to do a gulag 1-50 spam.

Will there be more Seasonal Point Rewards?

Yes, there will be a new chapter collection.

Could you please elaborate the changes to Trial Scaling in Ch 2. These scalings are in addition to the base trial 1 debuff? Are there changes enough to make trials less 1 shotty in any meaningful way?

The changes featured in the article are definitely not enough and there will be more changes to bring a better balance to raid trials. The goals are:

• Unavoidable mechanics can't just 1 shot at higher levels (assuming you are doing what you can to have proper resistances)
• Raw DPS is not the main barrier to completion. The spread in Elune for DPS is just going to be too big that it becomes to prohibitive.
  • This may mean tweaking enrage timers or lowering health scaling

With the addition of new abilities to make throwing ninjas useful again will we see a change in the level you can get shuriken toss (34 is kinda high) or deadly throw (60 is meaningless for prestige runs)?

Shuriken can definitely can have its level requirement reduced, Deadly throw will need ranks made but it can also be reduced eventually.

Is there a rough estimate on how much easier builds are to roll after these changes? Saying drastically increased is incredibly vague. Rolling a build twice as fast as previously I would say is relatively "drastic", but in this context it'll still be a month worth of grinding.

There's no realistic, honest way to quantify it. There is too many variables that have changed, and it really depends what you mean by rolling a build. I know your particular standard a lot higher than most 😄

What I can say is that it felt a lot better to play myself, and it resulted in me not getting stuck without progress for a big stretch of time like before, and things are setup so tweaks can be made a lot faster now, as they are needed.

Can you please remove the restrictions on the "bear attack" enchant? We all have a dream of being a bear tank with a bear pet that could summon a bunch of bears. Please and thank you, bear community.

There is some multi-pet stuff prototyped that we'll re-explore in the future. It has some quirks, but it was developed for the COA necromancer and could be refined to let you have you be a bear, with a bear, and spawn a bear army.

Is there an update on the Battle Royale mode and is there an ETA?

 It is in the running for the next season! 

Also are there any updates planned to improve the quality of the Southshore BG experience?

Nothing in the works currently, but you can DM me ideas or start a feedback discussion.

Will manastorm BGs be a seperate instance from normal BGs.

It will be a brawl separate queue, if needed it will just be available at specific times. 

Will there be new Race options in Chapter 2?

There's something in the works!  Not for chapter 2 though.

Are dungeons able to being ported from MoP or later expansions, the same way you port new arenas? 

 Currently, focusing is on completely custom dungeons made from the ground-up instead! There's some teasers of that on the twitter.

Will the stats of the Heirlooms be buffed before Chapter 2 Launch?

The stats on heirlooms are being increased with this update! 30%~ buff on most if I recall, some pieces were buffed more.

With changes to the Manastorm, will hero’s maximum Manastorm level be reset?

This is still being explored, and I will open a discussion around it before the update.

Right now there are 2 paths:

Letting people opt-in to reset so you can choose to get all those first time completion rewards again (one time).

I am not 100% sure this will even be supported, but it is being explored.

Just resetting it entirely so everyone benefits from the first time completion again and can explore the new progression.

The difficulty curve and expectations have definitely changed, it is harder in some ways but much easier and more manageable than others.

I still think one of the core issues with the season is a lack of incremental progress where running a night of Ascended Raids could yield absolutely nothing for the time investment if you do not roll something you want for your build. The new changes don't seem to help with this and will ultimately result in players feeling like they've wasted a significant amount of time with no progress to show for it. Is this something that is just to be accepted because it's Wildcard, or is there something in the pipeline that would help with this feeling?

This was really one of the primary goals of the wildcard update was to improve that incremental progress. The core focuses of the wildcard updates are:

• Decrease total time you spend rerolling
• Make progress more incremental

This was done through

• Where the rerolls are faster
• More skillcard slots
• where you get the cards you need faster
• where the process for opening the packs is improved
• Where your skillcards benefit your synergy rolls
• And there are more Possible Synergies to roll
• With Synergies that happen more often
• And Talent Upgrades happening more often

That being said, if you're near the very end of your progression looking for one last thing as a top-end ascended raider the progress still isn't going to be instant, some of it is inherent in the nature of wildcard, but we'll keep looking for opportunities to make the pacing better.

Will Death Knight spells come to Season 9?

Death Knight spells will come in a pre-patch to WotLK when the expansion is near release.

Will Grove Ranger be getting any buffs/changes on Area 52? It's been struggling for a while.

There is an update for grove ranger coming with chapter 2 that will come to both realms! This was covered in the balance article. 

[Grove Medicine] - New effect: Chimera Shot now causes a Medicinal Pulse when cast on a target affected by your Medicinal Sting, healing up to 5 nearby allies within 20 yards, prioritizing the most injured. Giving more an on-demand to the Grove Ranger while also increasing their AoE potency.

Any thoughts on balancing BGs better?  In its current state it is really hard for new players to simply not get run over.  Will the resilience change fix that or simply help with the curve?  What about lopsided teams.  Meaning teams with 3 healers or teams with all vet players that sort of thing.

The healers are currently balanced between teams, if you ever notice that isn't the case send me a DM with the scoreboard and I can see what can be improved. 

There is more to do to balance bgs for veterans vs new players though.

For raid trials, is the -2% healing per trial level INSTEAD OF current -25% healing in all trials or IN ADDITION TO the -25% healing....e.g. will trial 6 be -12% healing or will it be -37%?

Yes it works this way currently

• i.e. level 1 is 25% and level 2 is 27% and level 3 is 29%, etc. 

Any chance to fix the size scaling of tamed pets for Chapter 2?

 We will get them sized more appropriately. Many are too small right, but they can't be giant

Are there gonna be any changes to the silas scroll quest cap?

No plans for this currently, they're just gonna keep releasing. The main goal was improving how good each scroll was rather than just giving more and more scrolls.

How long will this season be kept for? I don't want to spam raids just to vendor all my gear in tbc cause it was moved to area52 after naxx.

Timeline for chapter 2 will release sunday! Going into TBC though, there likely won't be a heavy twisting presence debuff this time around. It really isn't needed anymore, so you will be able to use Naxx gear in some capacity into TBC.

With treants coming as elemental pets, is there any chance we'll be able to tame ancients (the big tree dudes, like Tendris Warpwood)?

This was originally what we set out to do, but then this ents shook your screen and everyone around you with every step they took, so we benched this for the time being lol. That will be removed from the pets and then those will be added.

Are there plans for a Manastorm Dungeon Finder mechanic?

Yes, there are plans for this there's more planned also to encourage more grouping.

With the new synergy added, can I see abilities I can never use like bear or cat form abilities without having the form to use it ?

 You can see them, but not as synergies you won't get feral form abilities or talents as a synergy without a feral form.

Has anything been done to address the near necessity to design a build specifically and only for Manastorm to reasonably progress solo, or do I need to keep a bear spec still? 

Several things have been done!

• There are upgradable hearty heals (hearts on ground) now that scale based on ap/sp
• Raid bosses will throw out hearts to heal every 10%~ HP so dps actually gets inherent healing here
• Sustain being used was broadly nerfed and damage was recalculated with that in mind
• less damage is passive now and much more of it is mechanic oriented. You can avoid a LOT of damage with proper placement, interrupts, cleanses etc those were made to matter a lot more.
• There's a lot less affixes now per map, they have clear indicators, and they have ranks so they scale up and begin to matter a lot more, before sustain builds largely brute-forced these and everyone else couldn't participate.
• Potions can be upgraded now to counter these mechanics.

Of course, there will still be upside to having a curated build for the manastorm, but that gap was definitely too big before. 

Are you happy with current damage values going into TBC (especially with the 10 extra TE and AE)?

Not particularly happy no, ideally DPS would not be so high, but for this season that ship has largely sailed. As you said, raid trials will be there for most challenging content.

Are manastorms still rewarding Marks of Ascension at a similar (or greater) rate to what they are now?

They are the same currently, but will be reviewed to make sure that’s a good number.

The current changes to hybrids (at least on elune) have made pure gear and most pure builds, with the exception of nice but hard to roll builds, fall far behind in endgame content. Rolling mq 5/5 with hybrid gear will give you far more damage than pure gear will give you on pure physical builds. Will you be making any changes towards this?

This is something on the radar, and we are looking at what can be done. This is really specifically an issue with MQ being a 5/5 talent point that you can get for 1 point that really pushes it over that very finely tuned edge for hybrid balance. I will update you when we have a solution here.