#patch 7.1.5

[art-of-nighto]

Have a good 7.1.5, hope your class/spec didn't get wrecked!

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[fragmentsofsilverspeak]

So WoW Community hows 7.1.5 treating yo--:

Ooookaaaay....how about you Overwatch, what’s going on over--:

....how about you Heroes of the Storm?

Lovely. Sup Diablo.

Cool. Well how about Hearthstone?

Alright so two fandoms are on fire and the rest are doing just fine. Seems about right.

[anthai-of-stormwind]

Nothing Lasts Forever

[NOTE: This story takes place prior to the opening of the Tomb Of Sargeras. For maximum feels, put this on repeat in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE7MKSKkA]

The night sky flashed with lightning and the rain whipped through the wind, leaving none in doubt as to why the region was named Stormheim. A lone mage braved the weather, her hooded cloak clutched tightly about her. She could have teleported to the warmth and shelter of the Hall of the Guardian, but chose instead to let the storm lash away at her, the cold rain washing the last traces of a hangover from her.

She barely noticed. Anthai Taylor was deep in self-recrimination, bits and pieces of the previous night replacing the fog in her mind.

It had been a simple gathering at Greywatch, a few Templars gathered there on a brief respite from working with the Nightborne to take back Suramar and the Nighthold. It was Anthai's birthday, and she'd conjured small, sweet cakes for all. They laughed and swapped stories late into the night, gathered around the central fire. Keleosha was there, that paladin from the other Draenor; and so was Aunne, and Kage, and the Worgen rogue Victor Blackwald.

Victor.

He had been the catalyst. Anthai had been supremely drunk, and lamented the lack of pretty girls around to entice into her bed for the night. Victor, always the irrepressible rake and refusing to take the word "lesbian" for an answer, joked about being a woman for the night. Anthai had laughed, saying that she preferred her women less hairy. Victor had shown off a trinket he'd nicked from Silvermoon back in the day, and he'd waved a clawed hand over it, and suddenly Anthai stopped laughing.

A sheet of rain blew into her face as she got closer to Valdisdall. She stopped against a large tree for a moment, her head throbbing, trying to piece together the shards of memory.

The orb had a shapeshifting effect, didn't it? It was just a toy, Victor had said. Just for fun. He couldn't have known. Couldn't have deliberately shifted into the slender form of a Sin'dorei woman who just happened to be the spitting image of Anthai's dead lover Karan. It was absolute coincidence - the trinket produced random appearances - and absolutely the worst face Victor could have worn.

There was screaming then, about betrayal, about sweet lost Karan, about wearing her dead love's face like a Hallow's End mask, and then Victor was on fire and he was screaming now as the other Templars rushed to douse the flames, staring at Anthai in shock and horror.

She couldn't remember what happened after that. She must have fled, but to where, she couldn't recall. She didn't even have her traveling pack with her, just a rumpled white cloth emblazoned with a golden cross, held in one clenched fist like a lifeline to a life she no longer deserved.

Anthai entered Valdisdall soaked, shivering and exhausted. She followed a guard to the meager inn and dried off in front of the fireplace. Too weary to teleport, she arranged for a gryphon back to Dalaran whenever the storm let up. She asked for a pen and a few sheets of parchment, and wrote two letters. The first was to Khazarath Redbraid, the Ebon Blade ambassador who would be able to find the actual wayward recipient of the letter.

The second was bundled into a package with the tabard bearing the mark of the Templars of the Rose. Anthai wept over this one, the Templars having been the closest she'd had to family for decades. She'd betrayed them all when she accidentally turned her magic on Victor, betrayed their trust in her, betrayed her trust in herself. The only other time she'd lost control like that was the first time, death staring down at her with emerald skin and a bloody axe and the magic had erupted from her, killing the Orc but trapping her dying family inside their home.

A pain dating back to the First War seized Anthai by the heart and squeezed. She stopped and started the letter a dozen times, trying to explain her reasons to the Justicar while knowing they would only be read as excuses. There would be no going back. No more friends or comrades-in-arms. No more steadfast Koryander and Jarrick leading the charge with shields held high, no more Shadowsage or Mosur healing her wounds, no more Sumeri with whom to share jokes and be the ice to her fire, no more brave Caelryn or erratic Lei Pan or headstrong Kanta.

She finished the letter and handed the package to the porter. There was nothing here for her now. She could return to Dalaran and the Tirisgarde and be their weapon to wield against the Legion. Maybe she'd go back to Pandaria to try to regain what she'd lost. Maybe Suramar. She didn't know and didn't much care.

Wherever she went now, Anthai would fight alone.

[anthai-of-stormwind]

Thanks, Oculeth

"This will get you to where you need to go...more or less."

"Wait, what the f--"

* * *

Anthai of Stormwind, orphan of the First War, last of her family line, was displeased.

Perturbed, perhaps. Out of sorts. "Nettled," as Sumeri would put it. She drifted, bodiless, in a glowing violet ocean of raw arcane magic. How long ago had that reckless, incompetent Withered screwed up what should have been a simple teleportation spell? Days? Months? How the actual fuck had that idiot become a telemancer?

Anthai tried to re-focus on the swirls of arcane power surrounding her. What was the lesson Leigh had tried to teach her years ago in Old Dalaran? Arcane magic was order. Logical patterns, mathematics. Anthai was terrible with math. Probably why she never quite got the hang of the Arcane school. Fire, that was easy. Fire was rage and destruction. Fire had an effect. It consumed and hungered and it was hers.

But even the school of Fire had to be checked. She'd learned that in Pandaria. A beautiful, golden land of balance and tranquility out of necessity. Slow down, the Pandaren had constantly tried to impress upon her. Your rage sustains me! the Sha Of Anger had roared throughout Kun-Lai. The Alliance and Horde had thrown these people into chaos and turmoil by bringing their war to Pandaria's shores, and Anthai had known right then and there that her baggage was absolutely not going to be responsible for harming innocent lives.

Think. Meditate.

Hard to do without a body to control your breathing. Her consciousness was spread throughout the arcane, woven tightly into its patterns. Damned science. Discipline. Focus your anger. Find your balance. Be fire, not fire's slave.

You control you.

And just like that, the answer hit her. She'd been going about this all wrong. She'd been so focused on solving the equations of the magic itself, but all she needed to do was follow the order and patterns inherent to her own corporeal form.

Anthai took a moment to curse - well, everything, really - and drew together the atoms which made up her physical self, herding them into place, feeling (finally feeling!) her skin tingle and warm up, her magic flowing through her alongside her blood, her breath--

* * *

A bluish-white light flared once and winked out of existence, depositing one very, very, very angry mage at the feet of the Greywatch flight master. He jumped back, startled, as the redhead slowly stood up and brushed herself off. Orbs of flame swirled, crackling, around her head, and her eyes blazed with the color of lava.

The flight master took a step back, intimidated by her glare. She reached into the pouch at her waist and handed him a few coins. "Get me to Meredil," she said. "I need to have a little chat with somebody."

[mistyteahouse-blog]

Advanced Mistweaving Page Updated

Advanced Mistweaving Page Updated

[lead]I know it took forever for me to update the Advanced Mistweaving Strategy guide, but in my defense I had no idea what to write until now and didn’t have the time to sit down and figure it out. This is why vacations are awesome! [/lead] This time I expound more on the different styles of healing in Mythic+ vs raiding and how you can improve on both accounts. I also give a more detailed…

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[queenofthecrackpit]

When you read the 7.1.5 patch notes and look at hunter notes and see all amazing beautiful things (WE GET THE ICE TRAP BACK FOR BM YASS) then look at legendaries and the one you have... only to see that your beautiful op legendary has been made very much less op... goodbye 1min aspect of the cheetah cd and 30sec aspect of the wild cd.. and 1.5min aspect of the turtle cd.. you will be missed. 

[kontrolstyle]

Welcome to my Brewmaster Tank guide, If you enjoyed my Monk Mistweaver Healing Guide, this should be right up your ally. Thanks for stopping by. You will see me KontrolStyle talking about how I tank in World of Warcraft this may or may not help you, if you have any questions or pro tips feel free to comment. Thanks for watching! Click here to Be Stylish Too► http://bit.ly/BeStylishToo

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[ahvie-voidsinger]

Lore gets back to shadow priest community on the ptr

((directly quoted from the forums))

Thanks for this. Some great feedback here.

Overall, our goal in 7.1.5 is not to nerf Shadow's damage across-the-board, just the extreme cases that can occur with Surrender to Madness. Some of the mechanical changes will likely mean you're weaker or stronger in certain situations, but our intent is not to make Shadow "worse."

To speak more directly to your points:

1) Not sure we agree that capping Mass Hysteria is the right approach. It would feel pretty artificial, and while we'll make those sorts of changes when absolutely necessary, we don't think that's the case here. Also, we don't agree that the change to Insanity drain makes Surrender to Madness more difficult for lower-end players; keep in mind that Insanity drain is actually lower for the first 18 seconds than it used to be.

2) We had several issues with the way Void Bolt fully refreshing DoTs was working out. In multi-target encounters, it required you to constantly switch between targets to refresh (which gets highly APM-intensive during Voidform), and there was a high penalty for accidentally letting DoTs drop off before you could Void Bolt. Changing it to add duration to all nearby DoTs helps resolve both of those issues.

Conversely, in single-target situations, you were able to extend your DoTs pretty much infinitely. We want to move away from that. As a DoT-based class, you should have to re-cast them from time to time.

However, we do agree that you're probably having to re-cast them more than is necessary in the current build. We've increased the duration of Shadow's DoTs for the next build, to reduce how much time you actually have to spend maintaining them.

3) We think it works well as a passive option in that row, and expect its DPS value to go up as a result of some of the other changes in 7.1.5. Depending on how much that is, we can buff it further if necessary.

4) The new Mind Spike is an experimental change that we're not entirely certain is going to work out. We put it out for testing with the knowledge that, worst case, we can pretty easily revert it to how it is in 7.1. We'd ultimately like to rework Mind Spike in some fashion, but the version currently on the PTR might not be it.

5) It's true that multidotting presents some challenges for balancing Shadow, but we don't see that inherently as an issue. We want you to be strong in certain areas (for example, Shadow excels on multiple spread-out targets, such as the majority of the Odyn encounter), which in turn means you'll be weaker in others. As long as the variance between those areas doesn't get too large, we see that as a good thing.

6) We think that hard “drop” is a good thing – it provides a stark contrast between how the spec feels inside and outside of Voidform. When dropping out of Voidform has such a noticeable impact, you get a much more direct sense of just how much you were getting out of it before. That said, we did recognize that some players might disagree, which is why we reworked Lingering Insanity into a talent.

7) This is an interesting suggestion. It should still be pretty effective as-is, but we’ll talk about this idea some more.