So Many Changes in Legion Patches 7.1, 7.1.5, and 7.2
There were a great deal of changes announced for 7.1.5 and 7.2 at Blizzcon this weekend. This Reddit post has a good summary. Blizzcon was great, but I am busy enjoying all the 7.1 changes! I haven’t been posting much because I haven’t wanted to take my free time away from playing to write guides in the detail that I have come to expect of myself.
Druid Changes
7.1 seemed in part to be a love letter to druids. Many of the changes I am really digging are druid specific:
- Travel form travels almost as fast as mounts - it doesn’t benefit from Broken Isles Pathfinder but for short to medium distances it is nice to be able to use the class-fantasy-friendly method of traveling. Even for long travels, you can’t be dazed out of travel form, which is nice.
- Regrowth is baseline instead of Healing Touch - This makes Guardian Affinity a bit more appealing for raiding - you don’t need Restoration Affinity for access to a strong, fast heal.
- Owlkin Frenzy now empowers only Lunar Strike - it used to also work for Solar Wrath (or Stellar Flare). I made a weakaura to track the buff to make sure I only used it for Lunar Strike. While I was happy to optimize my play to get a minor edge over other Balance Druids, overall I enjoy not having to worry about that detail anymore.
- Treant Form is always 5th stance after Moonkin Form - it used to be 4th whenever you logged in or refreshed, and not having to switch specs and switch back to make it 4th form is a huge quality of life improvement - thanks Blizzard!
- Manasaber and Manakitty form in Suramar - and you can be “disguised” as a bear too - you used to break stealth out of no stance or Balance form.
Other Changes
A few of these were leading up to 7.1, most came in 7.1. And this isn’t even a full list. I have some gripes with the Legion design philosophy in general, but the changes for 7.1 were almost universally positive:
- PvP is more rewarding now - See a full list here, the first skirmish win gives 100 base honor, for example. I’ve gotten back into arena for the first time since early Draenor. I’m much worse and more casual at it than raiding, but have enjoyed climbing past 1600 in 2s with a few different friends.
- Karazhan is fun. I offspec heals (and do it pretty well; many of my M+10 clears are as a healer) and some guildies needed a healer, so I got luckily carried through a Nightbane run - and got the mount - and got a warforged 880 trinket. Good times. Kara was/seemed quite fun, I hope to go through it at a slightly slower pace soon.
- I like the Falcosaurs. They look cool, the world quests are great for me as a skinner, and the new Falcosaur dish is good for leveling cooking to 780. Now all I need is Nomi to give me a single rank-3 Delicacy recipe and I’m on my way to 800 (and unlocking the Nightshare Refreshments in the Court of Stars).
- The new Potions of Prolonged Power are great. They are almost-but-not-quite as good as the more expensive potions for most specs. I bought several stacks of 100 to use freely in Mythic+ dungeons. I would buy them en masse while you can before Alchemists run out of Blood of Sargeras.
- Similarly, I am a fan of the Blood of Sargeras vendor in Dalaran - cheaper mats are great overall.
- World quest edits - the spawn rate or goals were slightly changed on a few world quests. Some were moved from a progress bar to objectives or vice versa. Every time I encountered this, it seemed like a good, well-reasoned decision. On a few, I had thought “the respawn timer on these mobs is a bit too slow” or “this should have/not have objectives” and Blizzard made that change - it was like they read my mind.
- Bumping the maximum baseline gear reward to 845 was appreciated as well - at 880 iLvL, it makes the chance that something will titanforge into something useful a tiny bit more realistic.
- Slight dungeon edits, such as making the ground effect much more visible on the last boss of Halls of Valor or removing a few non-intuitive shortcuts. Bravo.
Coming Next
So, what’s next for this site? The Withered Training Guide and Legion Class Guides Hub are getting tons of hits, and many of you check here every day or every few days hoping to see something new. I want to focus on three things:
- A few more detailed guides;
- when I have an idea that isn’t a big, detailed guide, post it as a quick, short post while it’s relevant, and
- see if I can find a theme that organizes the content here a bit better than chronologically. In my head I imagine using something with a front page of resources and “top posts” as well as a list of recent posts. I like blogs that give the first few hundred words than you have to click for more detail - I think that right now the site is a bit hard to digest with long, full posts on the front page. I also think I can utilize categories better to make finding relevant old posts more manageable.
I have a ton of ideas for possible posts; it’s just setting the time aside to write them. Here are a few of my ideas:
- I have the bones of a detailed guide to log analysis post done, but I want to brush that up before releasing it.
- After that’s posted, maybe doing friend/reader log analysis (in some ways it’s much easier to analyze someone else’s play and be more objective).
- Sharing my weakauras,
- Discussing the design philosophy of Myhic+
- Discussing the design philosophy of Legendary items in Legion and options going forward.
- Shoulder enchant options in Legion
- Why parsing doesn’t matter, except when it does
- Mythic+ thoughts and guide compilation
- Emerald Nightmare and Halls of Valor Guides compilation
- How to Track Hidden Appearance Progression
- Making a UI Revisited
- Where to focus: what is the best way to gear up outside of raiding.
What are you enjoying in 7.1 or looking forward to in 7.2? Do any of the above ideas spark your interest, or is there something you want a guide for? Best of luck in Halls of Valor this week!
Comments:
wrathsome - Nov 2, 2016
Since you asked, I think making the strong but older posts float up on the top page would be good. A lot of bloggers feel that “once written done” and hope that searches will find the post rather than the blog itself being the hub. Defining yourself as a blogger is like writing a mission statement which is kind of goofy because of what the mechanics of a blog are to use; meaning newest is top rather than strongest or topical. From your blog, I want Raid Advice; from solutions to tips to tricks to conceptual approach (your to-do list that you posted). Grats on Kara.