Community Council Interview with Graham Berger and Ion Hazzikostas - Augmentation Evoker & Damage Meters

Live Publié 14/07/2023 à 22:03 par Squishei

Augmentation Evoker

Keeping balance on all classes is the goal and that includes Augmentation. Seems really good in Mythic+ right now, and they're waiting on more raid data to come in.

At a high level, they want to balance Augmentation similar to all other DPS. They're looking at participation, representation, success rate in activities.

People are obviously fixated on DPS numbers, but especially in keys, utility matters. Augmentation spotlights that aspect of it and some parts are quantifiable, but what about the times that your tank didn't die because they had extra stats. The goal is for every DPS spec to feel like they're contributing and be valued.

The top third of the talent tree is your core talents, the bottom third is options for ways to add damage to your group and the middle section is very utility focused.

They've been talking about the secondary stat issue of Augmentation and following along with the theorycrafting around it. From a design perspective, having Mastery be the best stat -- they kind of like that as Mastery is the unique thing for your spec. Graham thinks it's a tuning question more than a design question - can Versatility buff something as an example. They're keeping an eye on Mastery being so much better than the other stats, but part of it makes gearing easy which leads into the approachability of the spec. One of the first places that they might look is nerfing the Versatility coefficient on the Mastery, but they're going to keep exploring options.

Augmentation & Damage Meters

The team has seen the meme compilation of Augmentation Evokers getting called out for low DPS.

Right now in-game addons can't read the attribution shown in advanced combat logs, but right now the spec is super new. The playerbase has only had this spec for 3 days, and information needs to be shared amongst the playerbase. Augmentation has been really successfully in high level keys and that has spread amongst the community, and they expect news of the spec to spread more over time.

This reminds Ion a little of the Disc priest rework and when Disc Priests were getting kicked from groups for DPS'ing instead of healing.

Battle Pets

No immediate plans to add more Battle Pet dungeons.

A better use of time might instead be to add more accessibility to the system as a whole, rather than add more challenges for those who have already done everything.

Gearing

There's ongoing experiments with the gearing system in WoW. Maybe one day they'll feel like gearing is perfect, but Ion is skeptical they get there.

They're trying to strike a balance between chases, goals and having some excitement where it's there, but also having some safety net to protect against the worst aspects of randomness.

If things are too predictable, you can almost take out a calendar and circle the days on which you'll get your goals and there's no spikes of excitement and that's why the rare items are to keep some of those chase goals.

The other stuff like Catalyst, professions, upgrade system -- those are there to try to limit the variance in outcome between if you're the luckiest and unluckiest player.

Acquisition of the Evoker Legendary changed as they realized the psychology of something that starts off as exciting, but once enough weeks pass and periodic global reminders of other people's good fortune and your lack thereof turns it into something that is more negative.

The goal is to keep loot exciting but also have a safety net to limit frustration.

UI & Action Bars

They're working on a hotfix right now that will disable or roll back a lot of the Action Bar flashy stuff that people have seen. They've heard it was appreciated by some, but disruptive to many.

Pings

There are sound effects on pings. Ion isn't sure on adjustable sounds though.

Water Elemental & Observer

No current plans for a glyph to have a way to summon Water Elemental for RP purposes. They want to stick to Water Elemental having a combat-focused impact.

Regarding the Observer, there's a difference between adding new things that the community will need to learn collectively and potential for meaningful confusion. There's another pet that is a floating eye; that felt like more of a source of confusion than it was worth. They recognize some people thought it was cool. As they were working on Warlock customizations, a complete transformation in the movement, silhouette and everything about it but kept the functionality felt out of place.

Leveling Experience

They plan on having Dragonflight be the new leveling experience and replacing BFA.

No heirloom rework in very near future, moderate future likely. They'll be taking a look at leveling as previously mentioned as they move into future expansions and it would make a lot of sense to look at heirlooms with that.

Scholomance

Is there any chance of resurrecting obsolete quests? Anything is possible, but Cataclysm was an interesting time and some data might not be there anymore. Have to determine if it's worth it, but they liked bringing back some things as a fun nostalgia time.

Zaralek Caverns

No immediate changes to announce regarding rares and scaling but they understand that week 1, rares die so fast that they end up having to buff the health, but on week 16, people are afk or summoning.

Future content in Dragonflight will be designed with these lessons in mind.

Time Rifts Lag

Very actively looking at the lag in Time Rifts. They're looking at how the shards are spun up and balanced. Hopefully looking at improvements in the next week or so.

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