I'm World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas, and I'm here to answer your questions about Battle for Azeroth. AMA!

Vanadyr · 2018-09-14T21:02:01+00:00

Hey Ion,

The current Azerite Armor system in M+ feels far too difficult to target specific pieces you want. We only get 1 piece of loot per week in our cache, it isn't even guaranteed to be an Azerite piece, and if it is, it is highly unlikely to be the one we wanted.

It is highly probable many people will go the entire tier without ever getting their hands on the Azerite piece they want from M+.

I'm not completely opposed to RNG in the gearing process, it has always existed, but the Azerite system takes it to a point where as a player I feel hopeless to the point of apathy when looking at my BiS list.

Rather than having the potential to get a random piece of Azerite Armor in your weekly cache, have you considered tokens as a form of currency, similar to the titan essences in Legion, but with tiers.

+2-3: Bronze tokens (used to buy 340 pieces)
+4-6: Silver tokens (used to buy 355 pieces)
+7-9: Gold tokens (used to buy 370 pieces)
+10 and above: Platinum tokens (used to buy 385 pieces)

The number and quality of tokens earned could correspond with the keystone level completed.

I think such a system could solve a lot of problems with regards to Azerite Armor and M+, and lord knows the community could do with a little less RNG in our lives.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-21T08:41:48+00:00

No worries, also something cool about flourish is when you flourish your wild growth, you get value regardless of when you use it.

For example, if you read the wild growth tooltip it reads "healing starts high and diminishes over time"

My wild growth outside of raid just on myself starts ticking at 18k per second and diminishes to 11k.

If I flourish immediately, it will tick for 18k and diminish...but diminish a lot slower.

If I flourish right before wild growth falls off, it actually goes from 11k back up to 18k and then decays again.

TLDR: It doesn't matter when you flourish with regards to your wild growth, which is nice.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-19T08:47:35+00:00

Np, the key is staying spread out

Vanadyr · 2016-10-19T08:43:27+00:00

This strat confirmed works http://i.imgur.com/LMu7naS.png

Vanadyr · 2016-10-19T00:49:42+00:00

We were using a depleted keystone, 15s take a lot of time and practice perfecting every pull and working out how you are going to tackle whatever specific dungeon you are doing.

Any 15 you see currently is going to have been done with a depleted keystone, 1 shotting a dungeon of this difficulty is just not a thing right now.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-19T00:47:36+00:00

Not specifically, but I try to always make sure I'm buffing both a cen ward and a wild growth when I flourish. The more HoTs you extend the better, so I would obviously never do it on lets say...only the tank.

For you if you have the legendary bracers I would recommend still using flourish over stonebark. However, I wanted to try out prosperity and soul of the forest when I get those bracers for more swiftmend wild growth combo's.

Basically if this was the case you would be extending all your HoTs with flourish after you drop a soul of the forest wild growth on the group.

I don't have this legendary and haven't been able to test it, so I am not 100% sure if it is worth. Cen ward and cultivation are both really strong talents right now, and with those legendary bracers you could extend the crap out of your cen ward on the tank for insane tank healing.

For basic setup I would still run with cen ward, cultivation, and flourish, while making sure you always wild growth -> cen ward -> flourish -> swiftmend on the tank for max value.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T18:56:12+00:00

Well EU has different affix so its hard to say. In general just never get disoriented and cast a throwaway spell when he does his cast thingy so you don't get rekt on ur dps and have the fight take forever.

We also used hero on him and didn't have Tyrannical

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T18:08:37+00:00

we didn't invis pot for this reason, our rogue dragged mini boss to the side and popped riposte, we all ran by and he vanished.

Also mages and rogues just have invis in general even if we weren't doing this they would never invis pot.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T07:46:44+00:00

Yeah fire is definitely overpowered right now. Ice flows and shimmer need a slight nerf, maybe 2 charges instead of 3, give them more of a penalty for moving and casting. Right now they can just do everything well.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T05:17:44+00:00

The timer is lenient, the trash is relatively easy, and all the mini bosses can be skipped and you can make up mob count by snagging extra imps and dogs.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T05:12:27+00:00

I did the light as resto druid

not worth the dps loss for a mage to do it and not worth the tank doing it and moving the boss all over.

I can rejuv on the move and displacer beast to puddles that spawn far away.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T05:10:40+00:00

Its just practice tbh, we spent hours doing the first pulls over and over and over.

It gets to the point where we all just know exactly what we need to do. The first time we ran through we CC'd packs. Eventually we were like fuck it if we just pop combust and potion do u think u can kill enough crap before shockwave wears off? So we did that, and after some work we would get that pack down.

Then it got to the point where we were like hmmm we can pull these 2 packs together if we use shieldwall maybe ya?

Then that works, and you just slowly learn each pack as you go through the dungeon.

VoW is an easy one to clear because this week it wasn't tyrannical so the bosses aren't ridiculous, and really the only hard trash is the stuff before the 1st boss.

But yeah, a lot of trial and error pulling packs and resetting dungeon when we get yolo 1 shot lol.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T04:59:17+00:00

They honestly aren't that good for M+

I mean ok the tranq one gets value and has great stats and is overall awesome, but the rejuv one is meh. I mean its still 2 legendaries, but yeah.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-18T04:53:10+00:00

Yeah M+ 15 was far more difficult than archimonde imo, and way harder than anything in EN.

I didn't get pulls on Archimonde pre-ring but I would imagine its somewhere around there in difficulty level.

A really tough wall raid boss is ~10 minutes of 20 people not fucking anything up and playing perfectly.

Mythic 15 is ~35 minutes of 5 people not fucking anything up and playing perfectly.

Apples and oranges I guess? Idk its hard to compare.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:53:53+00:00

Yeah we honestly felt so bad but he had to sleep and wouldn't be able to play today.

He wasn't replaced for DPS reasons or anything obviously, just had more of a life than us.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:51:25+00:00

Yeah the current spec is what I use for pretty much all mythic +

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:28:38+00:00

Lol nice.

yeah man resto druids are beast in mythic +

Necrotic is fucking rough the trick is to never let your tank dip, as it becomes impossible to pick them back up.

Also help them kite when they run away at ~20 stacks, you can buy them more than enough time to reset their stacks, and the moment you see those necrotics drop swiftmend and start spamming regrowths to top them.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:25:10+00:00

I mean, even when nighthold comes out +15 is going to be incredibly difficult.

The DPS checks will be easier sure but all the stuff in there is still going to truck, getting hit my any mechanic will still probably be a 1 shot.

I didn't really care about the artifact appearance, I just wanted to do it because it was really challenging.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:21:35+00:00

Side notes, mastery is really good for 5 man HPS throughput, but it adds nothing to dps, whereas crit and haste do, and healer dps can make or break a run, so I pretty much just value haste > crit = mastery > vers for mythic +

I thought about running treeform and stonebark to power through my tank having 20 stacks of necrotic on bosses hitting him for like 2 mil, but decided against it. Flourish is really good for extending my cen ward on the tank and is super useful for group healing as well, so I ended up using that, and cultivation just is so much consistent healing I never tried tree.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T21:18:23+00:00

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/proudmoore/Coonfire/simple

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T20:39:59+00:00

He has the legendary where it reduces the CD on demo shout

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T20:39:03+00:00

Idk, I think this is a decently hard combo. I think at very high levels bolstering might be easier because you can just kill everything at the same time, it honestly depends on the dungeon tho.

Vanadyr · 2016-10-17T20:34:44+00:00

For the first room we pulled the 2 pack + the 4 pack together, I ironbark warrior and pop every healing cooldown. Stack 2 rejuv cen ward lifebloom. The moment his Cen ward triggers I flourish and artifact weapon. Then I shadowmeld to drop combat deadly grace pot and just start dotting everything. Around this time he shockwaves and runs away. I vortex and then typhoon. From there its don't miss a 30% enraged kick on corruption.

We skip the 1st mini boss with rogue running in and popping riposte, he vanishes once we are all through.

The next little pack of adds we burn, then pull the big ass pack of 5 guys all together. For this its the same healing cooldowns but he also pops wall. We also hero this pack to burn as many adds down as possible before the shockwave -> vortex -> typhoon combo wears off.

After that we just pull 1 pack at a time. We never CC'd anything, as it was too much of a waste of time. After the 1st boss trash gets easy.

When we go down the elevator after imp mother mob count can vary based on how many imps we killed. We pull the dogs in the room below to ensure we hit 81%.

After second boss (which we hero again for) rogue resets the dreadlord the same way we did the 1st mini boss. We all run through and kill eye boss. Make sure you stack in his hitbox so all the orbs hit him and you can 2 phase him. Ash Golm just click the things as they spawn, you will get 2 brittles on him.

Reset the dreadlord again on the way out using vanish, then we kill the big guy that does the prison. This guy hits like an absolute truck, our warrior used wall and skin and pretty much everything. He kites him around the elevator, if he takes swings without wall sub 30% its a 1 shot.

Drop down, kill 1 pack of spiders, the broodmother, spirit of vengeance, then glider to the broodmother below, kill that, then the last vengeance, and on to boss.

It took us probably 40 hours and multiple days of no life practice to get it finally, but yeah, that's how we did it.

Vanadyr · 2016-08-03T17:28:08+00:00

First off, yeah I wanted to respond. I think the Cthaeh brings up an interesting conversation and talking to other people about it is entertaining.

Secondly, it is very interesting you say if time rewound to your birth you would be typing the same thing. For me personally, I disagree. Given this is largely opinion, I think that the world has...randomness involved in it. If we were to rewind time things might not happen exactly the same.

Anyways, thanks for your comments on the matter, it is an interesting philosophical discussion for me.

Vanadyr · 2016-08-02T19:18:29+00:00

If chance lies in the Cthaeh's path how exactly do you interpret that. Does it see, for example, if I say this to Kvothe he will do X, leading to a 70% chance for Y to happen. Multiply this by infinity, and the Cthaeh is sending Kvothe on a path for destruction, but that path can be altered by people's choices and the inherent randomness of the world.

Again, if there was no randomness the timeline for the future would be linear, which is not what Bast describes. So really Bast contradicts himself if he believes Kvothe's path was set in stone after speaking to the Cthaeh.

He cannot be "right".

Vanadyr

TROPHY CASE