Caleb

@Zirene Hey Zirene, any chance we could see some sort of item similar to the "crystalized starlight" for boomins but a version for resto druids in SoD?

@Zirene @BarryGaming1 Can you pass along, again, the need to fix people's raid ID's in AQ? This is absolutely unacceptable and its starting to feel like the ops/devs are going to try and bury their head in the sand until tuesday reset. We need our raid IDs reset, yesterday. Thanks.

@BarryGaming1 Potentially. I'll pass it along since I'm not familiar with the goals of these and what not

@Zirene Hunter pets are getting targeted by the Hardmode poison effect causing tons of issues in RAQ and TAQ. Any chance they can get the treatment like they do for Living Bomb/Burning Adrenaline etc???

@Zirene @Kaghoegames @Andy_0627_ I can't say I disagree with anything you've said. I guess the word to describe the difference would be that level up raids feel "re-imagined" and the last two feel more "re-worked" if that makes sense. I am very exciting to see what is coming in AQ however.

The Molten Core is a completely new/reworked boss. Thunderaan as well. Chromaggus mechanics are bespoke with Black Affix to my knowledge. Ebonroc and Flamegor stop and go didn't exist, and many other things. Demonfall Canyon is completely new from the ground up and boss wise in P4. Also keep in mind that before SoD launched we had things loaded up like BFD, tons of runes, and Gnomer - but to my knowledge this release cadence between phases now is faster than almost anything WoW has ever done correct? P1 was 10 weeks Nov 30th-Feb 8th. P2 was 8 weeks Feb 8th-April 4th P3 was 14 weeks April 4th-July 11th P4 was 11 weeks July 11th-September 26th P5 was 8 weeks September 26th-November 21st (when the war effort begins) SoD will be on its 6th phase before it's 1 year old. It's not that effort isn't being put into the phases - previous phases didn't have a completely new boss visually like The Molten Core, or multiple difficulties in them. It's just reallocation of resources. Using the skeleton of previous content gives us something to test off of easily - the flexible difficulties - which is part of the SoD experiment for us - can you get multiple difficulties to feel good? I think so. Especially AQ I'm hoping we get it just right between the rewards not being additional power, but also being very desired.

Gonna give a TL;DR for Anniversary realms: - ONE ealm per rule set, per region. So NA will have 1 PvP, 1 PvE, 1 Hardcore! - Server transfers to these fresh realms for Hardcore characters on the new realms. So you can play hardcore, and if you die. Transfer to the new PvE realm! - Enforced faction balance on PvP realm - New LFG tool to list your group or look for people. It will NOT form the group for you - New chat channel specifically for services - like Summoning. To divide up lfg spam and services. This will be punishable if you spam the wrong channel with ads - GDKP is banned on these Anniversary realms - Fresh realms progress to The Burning Crusade

@Zirene @Andy_0627_ @bsguru00 Lot of valid concerns about SOD right now, but class balance is not a big one. It feels like class balance has meaningfully improved every phase which is my favorite aspect of SOD. Seeing a rainbow at the top of meters and a variety of viable classes and specs is A++. Thank you!

I gotcha, and I'm glad I'm doing what is considered a good job. I'm very hard on myself when it comes to PvE class balance and also itemization. Things like all of the toys as well are made by me, like Gift of Gob etc. So I'm really trying to bring joy and make people be able to play classes that were previously 'troll' to play. I can always do better/more but knowing on the right track is good. Also I totally get where you're coming from. You're only dooming because you care about SoD.

@Zirene @Kaghoegames @Andy_0627_ To expand further, it feels like when the core functionality of a bosses design is borrowed from SoM it feels like less effort is being put in especially when contrasting it with how different raids earlier in SOD were.

@Zirene @Kaghoegames @Andy_0627_ I think for others, but certainly for me when you put BFD/Gnomer/ST up against MC and BWL the difference is striking. I think the earlier raids set up an expectation for completely reworked bosses and encounters that didn't happen in P4/P5.

@Zirene @Kaghoegames @Andy_0627_ In terms of the raid content, I think any rational person has to accept the fact that they are functionally SoM raids with minor tweaks. I mean we literally link SoM boss fight guides and they're still 99% (okay 99 is hyperbole) accurate.

@Kaghoegames @Andy_0627_ When you say phase 4 launch you mean just phase 5 then right? Which had P5 also had Thunderaan, and entirely new questlines for classes that took Paladins to Andorhal, Priests inside the caverns of time, and Warriors to the top of Grim Batol?

@Zirene @Chyng0 thanks for the quick information, mind letting us know when the hotfix is live?

@Chyng0 @cjpbolton They're both being kept

@Zirene scarab lord fragment turnins are only giving 200 rep, not the 400 that was present in Season of Mastery. Is this intended?

@AggrendWoW Can you look in to maybe adding character renames for classic? I transferred to CS this morning and because character creation is locked I couldn't test if names were available on a level 1 resulting me in mistakenly getting a name I really hate :(

@Zirene @NonexistantN @LostJoshPython @AggrendWoW @EbonhardtTV AP vs Dragon (fits thematically) One-hand instead of Main Hand

@NonexistantN @LostJoshPython @AggrendWoW @EbonhardtTV What would you like to see out of Quel'Serrar?

Hey @AggrendWoW how many more iterations of the PTR will there be? I'm kinda hoping for a July 11th launch date for Phase 4

@AggrendWoW Explain how you had a gold mine with SoD and abandoned it to make... Cata? Have you logged in to SoD lately? Nobody is playing it anymore because the general feeling is that you guys abandoned it for such a ridiculous FOMO expansion of another project.

We just posted a quick update on Season of Discovery on the official forums, so feel free to check that out. us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/seaso… I understand that a bit of a delay on Phase 4 launch will disappoint some folks. Trust me, we don't love it either but putting on my "honest and transparent" cap, we've got a lot of plates spinning right now, and this really is the right thing to do not just for the game but for the teams that support the game. The level 60 phases are going to be really cool, and its my belief that in a lot of ways level 60 will feel a lot more like 2019 classic than SoD has so far in a lot of great ways, but in other ways will be a fun new take on Vanilla WoW endgame. We see this as an opportunity to reflect on what has worked best about SoD so far and start applying those lessons to what comes next. We need to take our time a bit though to do that, and a few things we are doing (such as a different approach for PTR) will be really helpful in the long run. So it'll be several more weeks for phase 4, but if you want to take a break while you wait that's totally cool. I personally want to tackle the Pandaria Remix this weekend, I plan to level my druid and paladin next week to be raid ready for Tier 11, and I've got a few more alts in SoD I want to get raid ready as well (especially with some of the gear adjustments we plan to put in for ST). Even if other flavors of WoW aren't your thing, phase 4 is still gonna be here before you know it. Anyway, thanks for the patience and be sure to keep your ear to the ground for more info on phase 4 PTR and other Phase 4 info in the next few weeks!

@AggrendWoW Regarding sword rogues: You've already implemented some cool abilities that I liked them receiving in later versions of the game like Between the Eyes, would Roll the Bones not introduce some interesting gameplay? I always loved the unpredictability and volatility of it.

The team focused on SoD has spent a good chunk of the last few days chewing on a rather large list of class adjustments coming soon (likely actually soon, not "soon tm" soon). As always we want to prime everyone that it's not going to fix every single thing everyone wanted, but we are continuing to iterate. We've been watching discords and forums for ideas and suggestions as we go, and while that's fine and good, I figured it might be a fun exercise to probe for a few suggestions here to a few targeted questions. Disclaimer; there may be an excellent idea in here that you love that we can't execute on for whatever reason. Game dev isn't easy and sometimes you have to pass on a good idea for a myriad of reasons. It's nothing sinister and its not us being tone deaf. Many things are also too big to hotfix so we have to think about what we do now vs. next phase. So, feel free to post suggestions or links to media with good suggestions in reply. Please do keep it civil though both towards me/the team and each other. I've been increasingly having to mute/block folks with abusive or unhelpful commentary so let's all be chill humans together. Lastly, please try and frame your suggestion with both a) the issue to be addressed, and b) your suggestion--phrased as concisely as possible. We likely won't have time to read super long posts/threads to find the meat of your point, so this will help (he says, while typing a super long post himself). Anyway, here goes: 1. Shadow DPS - We'd like to increase damage while allowing them to still shine in terms of group utility, particularly because their utility/value is likely to increase even further at 60 with some new stuff coming. One thing we also keep coming back to as well is wanting to restore mind flay to having a place in the toolkit. With that in mind, how would you suggest improving Shadow DPS with those goals in mind? 2. Survival Tree for Hunters - We know a lot of melee hunters really want Survival to be a thing and we agree that it really fits that "RPG ranger" class fantasy. Currently, BM tends to outstrip it in terms of raw output. What do you think could be interesting to zhuzh this up and make a deepish survival investment interesting? 3. Holy Paladins - We did you guys a bit dirty by not giving you interesting buttons to push like every other healing class. Viewed through a level 60 vanilla lens holy is great, but in SoD it leaves a lot to be desired. One thing we've been discussing is a group heal or some sort of proactive heal mechanic for Holy, but interested to hear some concise ideas here. 4. Sword Rogues - We have some adjustments coming in the upcoming update but we are open to ideas for how to make Saber Slash and other sword gameplay compelling. Might simply be a "do moar damage" adjustment that fixes this in the end, but we are interested in "feelsy" adjustment ideas too. 5. Warriors - Rage is a problematic mechanic because more damage = more rage = more damage = more rage ad infinitum. This is going to become more problematic at 60 as well. If we had it to do over again, we'd likely have normalized rage (i.e. you don't get extra rage when you do more damage/crit) at the start of the season and focused on major changes to their gameplay to compensate. The way it works now really hamstrings the design options for Warriors as we have to worry about the historically best dps in the game becoming even better later and forcing us to do an absolutely massive nerf which everyone would hate. To you, what would be a good trade for some form of normalized rage at 60 if we had to do such a thing? To close us out--at this point, we are always open to novel ideas for any class, including things that don't just strictly borrow from future expansions. Our philosophy on this has shifted from when we started developing this season and now we'd love to experiment with totally NEW mechanics (that ideally fit somewhat plausibly into the classic ecosystem). Not to say we won't use future expansion spells, but there's a willingness to expand our horizons a bit. Anyway sorry for the length. We've had a lot of fun just trawling discords and forums recently but figured I'd just throw this into the maelstrom and see what we get here as well. Thanks! EDIT: I am not answering questions here, so sorry if you want to ask something. My thoughts are irrelevant to this discussion and we want YOUR ideas.

@AggrendWoW @Canitnerd @evangelism ST was cleared faster than any raid in the history of retail WoW post-LK except EN including leveling time. And many of us remember what happened the last time blizzard made classic wow decisions based on "data around player behaviors". You think you do, but you don't. Hmm.

Being very honest, the goal is for very semi-casual guilds to kill SoD raids fairly quickly, especially these level up raids. I'm sorry if your guild wants a heroic-level challenge, but SoD just isn't that.  The raid that went out last week was just very overtuned and far beyond our intent for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with here. Not to say there won't ever be anything in SoD that's hard, but we don't currently believe the "critical path" of raiding (I.e clearing the raid each week and getting good gear from it) should be hard in this version of vanilla classic. There are other versions of WoW that have very, very difficult content.  In fact there are more versions of WoW than not that have very difficult content. As it stands now both Gnomer and even post-post nerf ST are vastly more challenging and require way more coordination than original WoW. One thing we like about the various flavors of classic is that in many cases the difficulty of raiding in vanilla wow is what players create for themselves by pushing their performance in things like speed runs and the like. I think long term we'd like to do better about supporting those types of emergent playstyles, but making raids a brick wall for the average joe isn't the approach we'll likely take. I understand if that may disappoint some folks but after several years of watching data around classic player behavior, we don't believe difficult raid content is what players actually want on this side of the WoW spectrum. Individuals and some groups may want it, but writ large most people seem to just want to chill and blast stuff with their friends and that's the goal we'd like to aim for for the average guild.

@AggrendWoW I thought we were supposed to be getting more loot in ST to compensate the increased raid size or at the very least the longer lockout? Just did our first and the loot was the same-ish per boss.

@ComplexMinded Cryopods, cryopods my dude. I respect the developer intent locking things to their DLC release but this is a really, really fundamentally important QOL feature that should be in the game ASAP.

The list is growing and the mic is still open! Who's up next? 🎤 I may show you my summary when I'm done (just so you know all this information is being used and shared)

Mic check! How are we feeling on ASA? Almost 2 weeks post-PC launch! Do you have a wishlist?