7.0 Announcement @Gamescom 2015

[Merusk]

I'm not really seeing what is going to make Demon Hunter tanking different from the agi avoidance tank they just added.

Demon hunter will be an Int-based self-heal tank! All the difference!

I was going to say they won't be dumb enough to make this a leather class, too but hey who am I kidding. Rather than make a 3rd class mail they'll make a 4th class leather. 

[Kail]

This is after having the most anemic patch content out of any expansion so far.  

"We're pretty happy with how the overall structure in Warlords of Draenor played out... We think that's a good amount of raid content, and that's kind of what we're aiming for."
https://youtu.be/e1WIEl4hRvA?t=1h25m21s

[Paelos]

I dunno, what comes after the kitchen sink?

e: as for the demon hunter thing, I bet they think this will help solve the "tank shortage". Which would mean that they don't understand the problem in the first place.  

You mean the tank shortage that existed day one and was only solved by Lich King until they fucked it up again? That tank shortage?

[Merusk]

Yes, but it's worse now because tanks have to actively mitigate or they go splat. So they took threat gen away as a problem and added "try not to die"

Managing threat was a pain in the ass, but easy after a point. Having to actively manage "don't die" buttons on top of positioning, effects and (usually) leadership of the raid/ group means there's even fewer tanks than there were in vanilla/ bc. 

You regularly see the "hey extra rewards" button for Tanks but never for heals anymore. Queues for heroics were 10-20 mins for heals because of this, I don't want to know what they were for DPS.

[craan]

I dunno, what comes after the kitchen sink?

e: as for the demon hunter thing, I bet they think this will help solve the "tank shortage". Which would mean that they don't understand the problem in the first place.  

You mean the tank shortage that existed day one and was only solved by Lich King until they fucked it up again? That tank shortage?

What did Lich King do that solved the tank problem?  I'm a Cata baby and only have experience from then on.

[angry.bob]

What did Lich King do that solved the tank problem?  I'm a Cata baby and only have experience from then on.

Be more fun.

Also, shit level unattractive armor on Sylvanas. I won't buy it just for that reason alone.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Same armor she had before except they covered her midriff.   

[Paelos]

Yes, but it's worse now because tanks have to actively mitigate or they go splat. So they took threat gen away as a problem and added "try not to die"

Oh I know what they did, I played a tank in Panda-land. It was shit in Cata and it was shit in Panda. And I argued with people on this very board about it.

Threat was fun, because damage was fun. When they tied them together, it was double fun. Yes, you had mitigation and you made gear do the work for you. But nooooooooooooo they wanted tanks to be less gear dependent. I wanted the reverse. I think as a tank you should be defined by your gear. You're walking fucking armor. You serve no other purpose.

But yeah that's when the game died for me. When they changed tanking to the shitshow it is now in the name of whatever-the-fuck-they-thought

[luckton]

Checking in on things after closing on my old house and moving the family into a vacation home for the next few weeks. Let's see what we got here...

Lorelol-wise, it seems they're trying to take a little bit of everything from every expansion so far and piece-meal something together. We've got vanilla stuff! BC demons and Illidan! Wrath vikings and Dalaran! Cata worgen! MoP ah...yeah...monks? WoD Gul'dan and Khadgar! Way to try and cram everything you can and end up having to cut some stuff at the end anyways.

Gameplay-wise, looks like I was right on an AA system, though artifact weaponry is an interesting, although revamped (Trials of Atlantis anyone?) way to do it. Guess it makes loot tables easier to handle now that you have one less equipment slot to worry about.

I guess I'm just being optimistic. It may not be the thing that brings back the millions lost, but this should keep the game going on a subscription-based level for at least another year.

[Kail]

Lorelol-wise, it seems they're trying to take a little bit of everything from every expansion so far and piece-meal something together. We've got vanilla stuff! BC demons and Illidan! Wrath vikings and Dalaran! Cata worgen! MoP ah...yeah...monks? WoD Gul'dan and Khadgar! Way to try and cram everything you can and end up having to cut some stuff at the end anyways.

I think if I still gave a damn about Blizzard's lore I'd be kind of annoyed at this expansion, it looks like the story is imploding or something.  This shit is already goofy enough with one universe, now we've got alternate universe time displaced Gul'dan thrown through the portal to modern times to revive main timeline Sargeras who wasn't really defeated and fight Illidan who it turns out was also only sleeping the whole time.  I mean, holy hell, this stuff makes X-Men's continuity look elegant.

Time travel always makes a mess of everything and on top of that whole "nothing anyone does matters because the writers can just pull another time travel fork out of their ass at any moment and invalidate everything" this storyline is starting to read like it was run through a blender.  It's about Demons, and it's mostly about Gul'dan, I mean, no, it's actually about the Naga, or the old war of eternity with the Night Elves and also the Emerald Dream remember that, oh and Dragons are back, like Neltharion again, so cool and also Dalaran is back and you hang out there plus demon hunters and Illidan is back and you can go to Argus and kill Sargeras also Khadgar is here and so is Turalyon and Valeria for some reason that makes total sense, also everyone gets Ashbringer and you're a politician leading a guild and everyone loves you and you're awesome.  

I'm half expecting to see Illidan get his ass kicked by the final boss just so that as the killing blow falls, we can see it be blocked by a sword, and future hologram cyborg Arthas steps out and goes "don't worry, I got this" and the theme song to Dragonball Z starts playing.  

[angry.bob]

Same armor she had before except they covered her midriff.   

What? No, they changed the color palette and it looks like shit, plus the brown leather midriff cover looks terrible and out of place. It would have been fine if they had added it and made the color match the rest of her armor.  There are also other, minor cosmetic differences but the colors being terrible is the problem. It's just fucking terrible.

[Rasix]

It just looks so old.   

[kaid]

I dunno, what comes after the kitchen sink?

e: as for the demon hunter thing, I bet they think this will help solve the "tank shortage". Which would mean that they don't understand the problem in the first place.  

You mean the tank shortage that existed day one and was only solved by Lich King until they fucked it up again? That tank shortage?

What did Lich King do that solved the tank problem?  I'm a Cata baby and only have experience from then on.

Basically threat became much less of an issue to get and keep and you had really solid durability with good tanking cool downs. Normal stuff was not that much of a threat and you could pretty much concentrate on positioning and watching out for stuff to not stand in.

I get where they were going with active mitigation but tanks already shouldered a lot of the responsibility in raids/dungeons and now you gave them more shit to worry about to keep themselves up and less reason to trust pug healers.

[kaid]

The Artifact weapons are way cooler in my imagination than they could possibly be in reality.

In reality they're going to be uninspired, un-transmoggable, grindy, not really as customizable as you're thinking, and ultimately there will be only one version of each that is optimal for raiding.

Next.

They have stated you can transmog your artifact into something else. But not transmog another weapon into your artifact look.

[Hawkbit]

I'm so glad there are no major hunter changes.

Survival Hunters are now melee with a pet, so this explains the spear.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=248628/legion-artifacts-what-we-know

wat.

[ezrast]

Wing Clip neva 4get

[Lakov_Sanite]

Honestly, hunter specs needed some kind of diversity and hunters did used to have melee abilities.  So less homogenizing is always good.

[SurfD]

True, but survival just seems like a bit of an odd choice.   Beast Mastery would have been a better fit with Mele Hunter in my mind.

[Merusk]

Yeah especially since the model for beast Mastery -Rexxar- is a melee guy.

[Zetor]

The WOW B-team (C-team? D-team?) was probably going down the list of things that Vanilla did differently, and were inspired by... the original survival talent tree. I fully expect Lacerate and Improved Wing Clip to make a comeback.

OTOH this means that every weapon is a hunter weapon once again!

[Lantyssa]

I'ma roll Need on it.

[luckton]

OTOH this means that every weapon is a hunter weapon once again!

At least until they get to WoD content and beyond. Some other dev interviews post-announce have confirmed what I mentioned above: weapon-slot loot drops are out for Legion. Artifact weapons are the new hotness, and personal loot means never having to worry about ninja-looters ever again.

[luckton]

The relic weapon system is interesting, as it feels like a return to pre-Cata talent trees and such.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=248628/legion-artifacts-what-we-know

[Threash]

You regularly see the "hey extra rewards" button for Tanks but never for heals anymore. Queues for heroics were 10-20 mins for heals because of this, I don't want to know what they were for DPS.

If groups are one tank one heal three dps the dps queues had to be triple that of healers right? so like an hour.

[Threash]

True, but survival just seems like a bit of an odd choice.   Beast Mastery would have been a better fit with Mele Hunter in my mind.

Isn't survival the trap spec? it actually never made much sense for a ranged class to run into melee range to drop traps.

[luckton]

You regularly see the "hey extra rewards" button for Tanks but never for heals anymore. Queues for heroics were 10-20 mins for heals because of this, I don't want to know what they were for DPS.

If groups are one tank one heal three dps the dps queues had to be triple that of healers right? so like an hour.

Pretty much. They tried to add some incentive for people to roll tanks by adding BoA loot drops to the reward bag you get for fulfilling the "Call to Arms/We Need a Tank/Healer" bonus once a day. You could at least pass on the bag to your DPS alt and keep them somewhat up to speed.

[SurfD]

True, but survival just seems like a bit of an odd choice.   Beast Mastery would have been a better fit with Mele Hunter in my mind.

Isn't survival the trap spec? it actually never made much sense for a ranged class to run into melee range to drop traps.

That hasnt been relivant since they added the Trap Launcher effect allowing you to place traps at range at will.  I also dont think the current iteration of Survival needs them either, as ticks from traps  / an ice trap going off longer proc Lock and Load in WoD if i remember right (could be wrong, my hunter has been BM pretty much the whole expantion, I dont think I have even selected talents for my Survival Spec since they reset them at the start of the Expac).

The wierd part is that i think Survival is the preferred PvP spec atm, due to the amount of controll / cc it provides over BM's pure damage output, and Mele PVP hunters jsut seem like a completely wrong thing to me.

[kaid]

Honestly, hunter specs needed some kind of diversity and hunters did used to have melee abilities.  So less homogenizing is always good.

I can see hunters/mages/warlocks/rogues could really use more differences. Sounds like demo warlock is likely going to get the whole meta thing stripped from then and refocus them more on their pets.

For rogues really one spec that specializes in stabbing people in the front and two stabbing them from behind is really primed for one of those to get a big change such as some are talking about maybe one ranged rogue build.

[Merusk]

This isn't happening until September 2016.

They've already done the "last" content patch of WoD and subs have fallen to the point they're not announcing numbers anymore.

Never change, Blizzard.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5239-Legion-Releasing-by-September-2016-Level-100-Boost-Early-Demon-Hunter-Access-Legion-Releasing-by-September-2016-Level-100-Boost-Early-Demon-Hunter-Access

[Rendakor]

Hahahaha oh wow.

[Tannhauser]

Wow, almost a year with no new content.  I wonder why subs keep dropping?

[Paelos]

Wow, almost a year with no new content.  I wonder why subs keep dropping?

I know you're kidding, but finally people aren't falling for it anymore. This is them getting caught in about the most blatant lie they've ever told. http://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-sees-annual-expansions-as-key-to-bringing-back-players/

Expansions once a year probably would have kept more players. But this? This is a joke, and a completely about-face from 2 years ago when people were already upset over the glacial pace.

[Rendakor]

If they were able to put out expansions once a year, I'm sure they would be doing so. But the reality has always been that content takes much, much longer to create than to consume and the devs at Blizzard are no exception.

[Malakili]

The amount of people clammoring for new content is just less either way too.  WoW could flood the game with content once a month and I have a feeling a lot of people would just say "meh, been there done that."

[Rendakor]

I'd resub for the new expansion if you could fly day 1, provided they also let me fly in WoD without grinding out Loremaster. I liked the game well enough that I'd pop in for a month or so every expac until they started removing features.