Q: There's concern that the first row of Azerite Armor is rather bland. Can you tell us more about the feature?
A:
Azerite Armor is currently on alpha and a small piece of a larger picture. For an individual piece, on the first row there's say for a Death Knight a blood trait, an unholy trait and a frost trait. But they're not exclusive to that spec and should be seen as recommendations, the unholy trait might involve Death and Decay damage, which will also work for the other specs. There's also many pieces of Azerite Armor, you have to compare the chest you currently have with every other chest piece, and there's also helms and shoulders as well.
Q: Will you be able to respec Azerite Armor?
A: Yeah! The frequency of how often
Azerite Armor can be respecced hasn't been determined yet.
Q: What about legendaries?
A: Legendaries as known from Legion will be left behind in Legion. There's a possibility for one-off legendaries.
Q: How will
Islands tie into endgame? Will we forget about them in a month in since there's no scaling past mythic?
A: Right now they're focusing on how re-playable they are. They're going to continue to support
Islands post launch, there will be patches to improve it. At launch, they're mostly focusing on the difficulties and how re-playable they are.
Q: How do you feel about the additional dungeons added in patches?
A: Lower Karazhan had a large amount of non-elite packed trash that gets affected heavily by M+ affixes. The overtuning of Seat and Cathedral was unintended. They were recently talking about Teeming in each of the new BFA dungeons.
Q: New affixes in M+?
A: Learning 10 new dungeons is going to be a lot already in BFA and they're also moving to Tyrannical and Fortified to level 2. Tyrannical and Fortified always changed how the dungeon played and your approach, and created a large difficulty spike at keystone 10. They're not exactly sure if they want something at 10, but they still like the idea of Kiss/Curse mechanics; the Deadmines mechanic of Rage Zone was mentioned where mobs standing inside deal and take more damage.
Q: Dropping keys is really difficult. Are there any plans to improve it?
A: No current plans on how to down rank a key but they've also had discussions also about the Premade Group Finder as when you search for 15, you only want to see 15 and not 14 keys.
Q: Any plans to scale the item level floor as you get harder dungeons (current level +25 dungeons)?
A: Right now at the end of the week you get a Mythic raid quality item. The end of dungeon runs item level they're pretty happy with, they made some changes in patch 7.2 with the 2 and 3 chesting but are looking for feedback.
Q: Are there any plans to add an achievement or mount to a +20 keystone?
A: There's currently an achievement for completing a +15, but they also have been talking about seasons and achievements similar to Ahead of the Curve. They don't know if they're changing it yet, but it's on their radar.
Q: What can you tell us about
Uldir and the Blood God G'huun?
A: Uldir is a titan facility that was built on the continent of Zuldazar and used to study the Old Gods. How do you kill the Old God, without killing the host itself. There's lots of cool things that you'll find out inside.
Q: What can you tell us about the raid release?
A: The structure they had for
Legion launch was a good amount of time. Possible they do something like that in the future. Queen Azshara will be the "Gul'dan" of the Nighthold.
Q: Now that tier is gone, what will be the draw for players who like both M+ and raiding to continue raiding?
A: There will be unique pieces of Azerite armor that only comes from raid. There's still really cool armor sets from raids and traits that will only come from raid. There will also be raid-specific trinkets and raids will just have a higher item level especially since Azerite armor cannot titanforge. Mythic raiders have the best loot in the game, and there's no plans to change that.
Q: How do you work to balance all the classes while keeping the unique?
A: A Blood DK's
Emprise de Fielsang is super unique and it would be less awesome if more classes have it. It would be nice for every class to have something like that. But if something is too powerful compared to other classes, they will still have to look at it.
One of the other things that Blizzard has to provide is opportunities for these unique abilities to shine. When mobs used to run away when getting to low health, it felt super good to stun, root or grip the mob and it's Blizzard's job, from an Encounter Designer perspective, to provide certain challenges. For example, in Antorus, on Aggramar and Eonar they made CC super important.
Q: Have you abolished the idea that you need a certain class for encounters like Priests on Blast Furnace?
A: No, but those mechanics should only show up on Mythic. Gul'dan on Mythic was an example of that.
Q: World Quests, what's happening with them in Battle for Azeroth?
A: They're back with many reputations and emissaries. They're currently talking about another Kirin Tor-esque faction with more minigame-like world quests.
