Concordance of the Legionfall

Ion alluded to some of this in his post last week, but essentially the goal here is to address what we believe to be the core of the issue with the 7.0 final traits: the large gap in player power it created between players who spent a lot of time farming AP and those who spent their time on other endeavors. To that end, there's four key changes:

#1: The individual ranks are less impactful. This was honestly one of the biggest issues with the 7.0 design. Grinding out a couple million Artifact Power for a 0.5% raw damage increase was just too lucrative compared to other methods of endgame progression - even eclipsing gear for some players. The goal for the new 7.2 design is that the next rank is still an increase, and you won't turn it down, but it's not your primary focus.

#2: The rate at which the cost for the next rank increases is higher. In the 7.0 design, someone who farmed twice as much AP as you had roughly twice as many ranks as you. While rewarding the extra effort isn't a bad thing, it doesn't need to be nearly that rewarding. By making each rank's cost increase exponentially, we can help ensure that you're never too far behind even if you aren't spending as much time farming AP. It also means that, as Artifact Knowledge increases, it'll be easier for alts or newer players to catch up.

As a quick aside, to put some extra context on both of those changes: we always want Artifact Power to be of at least some value to you. It's fine to reach a point where you're not going out of your way to earn it, but it's purpose is to be a fairly reliable form of progression. If you spend an evening raiding, or run a few dungeons, or do some PvP, but don't get any gear upgrades, you should still be able to say "at least I earned some Artifact Power" with some level of satisfaction.

Anyway, key change #3: The new trait gives a primary stat bonus instead of a percentage-based increase. With the 7.0 design, as your gear improved, so did the total benefit you were getting from your final trait. Changing to a primary stat bonus means it's giving roughly the same benefit to someone at ilevel 900 as it does to someone at 850. Again, the goal here is to reduce the overall power gap.

And finally, #4: It's a proc. I know anything that involves RNG is often controversial, but this is, in my opinion, a great example of where it's extremely useful. This is for two reasons.

First, it kind of muddies the waters a bit. When you wipe on a boss at 1%, or just barely miss a kill window, it can be easy to say "if Todd was doing 2% more damage we'd have won." But when it's a proc, you can't actually be that sure. Maybe Todd needs more AP, or maybe he just got unlucky with procs. Maybe the wipe wasn't Todd's fault at all. Maybe you should be a little nicer to Todd.

Second (and more importantly), it allows for player skill to play more of a factor. If you're the sort of player who can pay attention to procs and adjust your rotation on the fly (say, a healer who chooses to use cheaper spells while it's active, or a damage-dealer who saves a charge of their hardest-hitting ability), you're going to get more value out of the new trait than someone who ignores it.

I've seen some initial feedback that indicates some specs are likely to benefit from these more than others - to some degree that's expected, but specific feedback on which specs those are and why is very helpful. We're still actively tuning and tweaking things, so please keep that feedback coming.

02/22/2017 07:00 PMPosted by Napayshni

I haven't been a hardcore progression raider for a few years now, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that wiping at 1% due to poor procs/RNG is INFINITELY worse than simply needing a bit more gear to push you towards that kill.

I understand where you're coming from but personally disagree - for me, knowing we just got unlucky means that it's worth it to try again and hope for a different result, whereas "we just don't have enough gear/AP" means we should give up and come back next week.

Either way, my point wasn't to say "this will make wiping at 1% less painful," but more to say it's harder to pin it on Todd skipping last week's M+ farm. Poor guy.

02/22/2017 07:08 PMPosted by Advoe

I rarely gamble because I understand odds and know that the house usually comes out on top. WoW is starting to feel the same way. Obviously you need some random elements to keep everything from being completely methodological, but its really getting overboard.

Sure, I can see that, and to be clear we're intentionally keeping the proc pretty flat; it should still feel somewhat reliable even if it isn't a 100% uptime. Also worth mentioning that most of #4 above is just my opinion as a guy who isn't a developer but plays a lot of WoW and gets to talk to to the devs sometimes.

02/22/2017 07:14 PMPosted by Albatraoz

The issue, Lore, is you're now creating a problem on the flipside of the coin where power gains are so small that they don't seem worth pursuing, and each rank becomes even less valuable compared to the previous. Frankly, just don't do it. Get rid of the "infinite" trait completely. Artifact power tokens now have a gold value, so cut progression off after the 4/4 ranks and the new traits are maxed. Let players transition to getting 1-2% upgrades from gear after they cap their artifacts and vendor the tokens for a little extra gold.

We honestly don't see that as a problem. In fact, it's kind of the goal. If you decide it's not worth grinding a few million AP to get another 200 Agility on your proc... great! We don't want you to feel obligated to.

We do, however, want to make sure you always find the Artifact Power you come across to be valuable. 200 more Agi might not be enough to convince you to farm the AP needed to buy it, but you're not going to turn it down either.

Well, or maybe you would, in which case, sure, feel free to vendor the AP items. :)