7.0 Speculation Thread

[Rinoa]

With the upcoming expansion pack announcement there will undoubtedly be a significant amount of speculation. This thread is created in the interest of having place in which posting on this topic will remain relatively consolidated.

The closest set of announcement and information will be at the upcoming Gamescom. Anything pertaining to those is highly relevant in this thread. The event will be streamed at http://www.twitch.tv/blizzard" target="_blank


All abord the potential hype train. Choo-choo!

[Chev]

This isn't speculation, but more something I would like to see.

I like how the legendary items work now in that everyone gets to have a chance to work on it and reap the benefit rather than one person in the raid (who can then leave the guild) because in Firelands we had 3-4 people leave the guild before completing the staff quest. At the same time I like how having a legendary item made you feel special rather than now where it feels mandatory (and common) to have unless you are in a very casual guild.

My proposed solution: Have a guild quest which the guild as a whole works on for a legendary item. A bit like the guild perks of old. Once complete, that item can then be given to a chosen raid member for that raid or even on fight by fight basis. It wouldn't be locked down to casters or strength classes and in does something different based on the class or roll holding it at the time. It can then be another factor in raid planning to decided on who has the item for that fight or if locked to one person that night / reset, then that person gets to feel special for having it.

Perhaps the quest can be completed multiple times allowing multiple people to hold the item but it would mean that by the end of a tier / expansion only 4-5 people have it.

[Zelendria]

I'd quite like to see a new class, but would I go with FOTM and main one?.. hm

I don't like the old style of legendaries where essentially the guild favourite picks up an item the whole guild works for that never makes anyone but the single person with it a special snowflake. It's like the Tour De France; a team sport to which nobody cares or remembers who was in the team just who won the event.

Although I'm not particularly keen of the current shared legendary either. I don't like that someone else is controlling my own damage, and sometimes not even optimally either.

I think WoD raiding is pretty good and the fights have been largely enjoyable so some more of that is never going to hurt, but I would like more to do outside of the raid schedule.

[Nuovo]

bolvar fordragon pls

[Norrbert]

More like a speculations about the release date but :

-All the week end events stop in december, nothing for 2016
-Also if you calculate the time needed to finish the legendary ring 795 : it's december too...

From all the speculations I saw, the two possibilities I can imagine are : Eye of Azshara, something about the nagas and the elves, not far away from the legion. Orrrrrrrrrr something about what's going on under the ruins of lordaeron and the undeads.

Anyway what I'd like to see is :

-Grommash coming in Azeroth with us, not stayin in Draenor and never seen him again.
-Something about Wrathion and Kadghar
-No stupid legendary item like the cloak or the ring wich prevents you from playing alts ou switching main , and certainly not something you can farm in LFR and is totally RNG drop" ( Still don't have my ring and I farm 13/13 everyweek. *sigh* )
-Something new, A race or a new class, altough I'm aware that it would be complicated, but if it's a new class, I'D like to see something useful, something strong ( but no cheated like DK's were at the beginning , or weak like the monks ). May be the blademaster?

[Velerion]

The real question is, who's going healing if we get that chronomancer fourth spec? Eh eh?

[Imnick]

I'll wait for beta to be out before bumping the "suggest glyphs" thread but that was fun and I can't wait for Blizzard to once more squander all my brilliant ideas by not implementing them.

[Chev]

I'll wait for beta to be out before bumping the "suggest glyphs" thread but that was fun and I can't wait for Blizzard to once more squander all my brilliant ideas by not implementing them.

You are better doing something like that now so they have more of a chance to implement them

[Rabona]

This isn't speculation, but more something I would like to see.

I like how the legendary items work now in that everyone gets to have a chance to work on it and reap the benefit rather than one person in the raid (who can then leave the guild) because in Firelands we had 3-4 people leave the guild before completing the staff quest. At the same time I like how having a legendary item made you feel special rather than now where it feels mandatory (and common) to have unless you are in a very casual guild.

My proposed solution: Have a guild quest which the guild as a whole works on for a legendary item. A bit like the guild perks of old. Once complete, that item can then be given to a chosen raid member for that raid or even on fight by fight basis. It wouldn't be locked down to casters or strength classes and in does something different based on the class or roll holding it at the time. It can then be another factor in raid planning to decided on who has the item for that fight or if locked to one person that night / reset, then that person gets to feel special for having it.

Perhaps the quest can be completed multiple times allowing multiple people to hold the item but it would mean that by the end of a tier / expansion only 4-5 people have it.

Well that would certainly ensure the guilds that their progress won't be tied to one particular person. But for the vast majority of guilds you would still have the legendary restricted to very few people. Because you'll almost always have a couple of people who are at least a bit better/more reliable than the rest and thus will be preferred.
I think this addon-long progression legendary for everyone will stay Blizzards way to go, because it will potentially make every last player happy and I imagine that it also gives some players a reason to keep playing/coming back for new tiers.
Imo the far bigger issue how they designed the Ring. I have no idea why they shared the use-effect, especially when the damage-buff cooldowns differ a lot between classes. And I can only imagine the frustration in casual/LFR raids when the rings get used at the worst times. I also hate that the legendary rings trivialize progression so soon after release, especially when it's most likely the last tier of the addon with half a year left at least. The weekly upgrade is also a bit shitty for people who re-roll or who miss a loot id because of rl reasons and it makes the rng nature of the tomedrops even more frustrating. I'd much prefer it if everyone had his legendary before mythic release and if the encounters then would be balanced around it.

I'm wondering if they want to keep their rng heavy direction which they took, personally I want as little luck factor as possible in competitive games I play, however I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount, but I feel they pushed it way too far this time, especially with HFC-arcane and prophecy of fear, which is so far over the top that I have to assume that they very deliberately wanted to push the gameplay into this direction.

[Rinoa]

Regardless of what happens, not counting new expansion features or anything of the sort, I just want an expansion with dragons, titans and the likes. Enough damn orcs and darkness already.

[Rabona]

So I guess it's safe to assume that Demon Hunter will be another melee class?

[Komma]

So I guess it's safe to assume that Demon Hunter will be another melee class?

Looks like it, yeah.

[Searix]

Will be interesting if they keep the same roles for mage specs. They're limiting Demon Hunters to two specs (a tank and a dps spec), maybe hinting at some sort of trim for all pure classes?

Regardless i hope they change how specs work for pure classes. We almost ran into the issue of needing all the specs every raid this expansion but the 3rd spec always ended up not being a super hard boss so it wasnt really needed (frost in highmaul for twin ogron, frost in BRF for hans/franz, fire for xhul)

[Komma]

Arcane/Fire/Frost have such distinctive fantasies that I can't see merging any of them. It's a very different case from DHs.

"Needing all the specs" is not an issue at all. In fact, I think it would be even better, and I also prefer things stay that way. Having 3 viable specs on Imperator, each providing different contributions to the raid, was great design.

[Cinibas]

Wonder how "grindy" the artifacts will be. I like playing all three specs, but I tend to pick 2 per raid period (frost/arcane through highmaul, fire/arcane brf etc).

Just hoping I am not going to have to swap my specs on a daily or weekly basis to keep each weapon up to date so if I want to swap specs when a new raid comes out I am not in trouble because my weapon for that spec is weeks or months from being up to snuff.

[Sheridanjohn]

Wonder how "grindy" the artifacts will be. I like playing all three specs, but I tend to pick 2 per raid period (frost/arcane through highmaul, fire/arcane brf etc).

Just hoping I am not going to have to swap my specs on a daily or weekly basis to keep each weapon up to date so if I want to swap specs when a new raid comes out I am not in trouble because my weapon for that spec is weeks or months from being up to snuff.

Well I don't want it to be too grindy, it also has some really cool potential for class quests and end game character progression outside of raid.

Would be cool to see some sort of model where perhaps at the start it is spaced out (1 quest line a week), however say on week 3 if i wanna change spec i can do the first 3 quest back to back.

Will also be good if non-cosmetic upgrades are kept out of pvp/pve only content (bgs, raids etc), or allow you to complete the quest in either (e.g kill 100 hks or 100 drops from adds in the raid etc).

But yeah to me the whole Artifact system just looks like a way to develop max level characters outside of raids / arena / rbgs, something that wow was definitely missing in wod

[Arantes]

Arcane/Fire/Frost have such distinctive fantasies that I can't see merging any of them. It's a very different case from DHs.

"Needing all the specs" is not an issue at all. In fact, I think it would be even better, and I also prefer things stay that way. Having 3 viable specs on Imperator, each providing different contributions to the raid, was great design.

They indicated there will be 36 weapons, 1 for each spec in the game, so no sign of any trimming (34 current specs + 2 DH specs).

I'm very curious to see where our Class Order hall will be (will it be Dalaran, which is also apparently the central hub of the xpac) and what weapon Arcane Mages will get.

Fire mages get Felo'melorn (Kael'thas' weapon, teased in the Gamescom presentation)
Frost mages get Ebonchill, Greatstaff of Alodi (shown on the expansion website)

And of course what having multiple specs means for farming, upgrading and using the Artifact weapons.

[Rinoa]

I would be quite sad if we have to pick one spec weapon, then stick to that for an undetermined amount of time. I'd love to be able to just triple the normal effort of getting a sincle spec weapon to power level X, in order to get all three there.

[Kver]

I would be quite sad if we have to pick one spec weapon, then stick to that for an undetermined amount of time. I'd love to be able to just triple the normal effort of getting a sincle spec weapon to power level X, in order to get all three there.

I doubt we'll need to be too worried about that. In the end they'll probably figure something out. Will everybody be 100% content? Nah, probably not. Will it be fine? Sure.

I don't really see them locking us into a spec for an expansion without providing some way to switch the weapons, or providing free refunds whenever the balance changes.

[Imnick]

I imagine that "Artifact Power" will be the currency tied to your character not your weapon, then all you need for alternate specs is to do all of their intro quests to actually get the weapon (and then any other progression quests it may have).

But I have realised something far more important;

Biggest Mage News of Legion:

Dalaran is once again going to be the Neutral hub, meaning people will want portals there, meaning it will be so easy to give people the Ancient Portal by "accident".