Legendary System Clarification - Based on Q&A

#1 - Feb. 23, 2017, 8:47 p.m.

Afternoon,

The Developer Q&A Today introduced some changes to the Legendary System that we had no information about previously, but they were incomplete in regards to how they would work with the rest of the system.

Ion mentioned that "Legendary drop chance and Bad Luck Protection" will be much more tied to SPEC instead of character. Specifically, that if you were to switch to an offspec that you had 0 legendaries for, then the system would consider you at 0 legendaries for the purposes of base drop chance and BLP.

That's awesome, but it leads to a few questions, and clarification on these would be much appreciated.

1) How does the above work in regards to Non-spec-based Legendaries (like Shard of Exodaar for mages, who works for all 3 specs. Does it account for ALL specs, or just the one that it was dropped on?

2) Very similar to the above, how do items like Prydaz/Sephuz/Kil'jaeden DPS/etc work under this system? Does it count for the spec it dropped on, or for all specs?

3) The PTR has had "Unidentified <Class> Legendary" items in its database for a while, and it's been speculated that these were a 'failsafe' for people accidentally getting a legendary in the 'wrong spec' and blowing their accrued Bad Luck Protection -- are these unidentified items still going live, are they going to be scrapped in light of the spec-based droprate/BLP ? If they are going live, is it intended behavior that people could play offspecs with low number of legendaries, or none, get these items quickly (since the first 2 legendaries drop faster), and then swap to their 'main spec' as a way to get a few more legendaries 'quickly' (in comparison to the norm) ?

4) How does BLP 'acquisition' work under this new spec-based system? Do I 'build up' BLP for all specs as I play, or only for the one currently set as my Loot Specialization? If it builds for all of them, this has possible unintended consequences, where once I get an item in 1 spec, I know I should swap to the others and get items 'relatively fast' since the BLP is built up a fair bit (assuming it wasn't RNGesus giving you an item very very early on)

Thank you for reading, I know a lot of these questions border on "gaming the system", but I think it's important to understand how these things work.

Lore

Community Manager

#9 - Feb. 24, 2017, 12:11 a.m.

02/23/2017 12:47 PMPosted by Amadraimarcy
1) How does the above work in regards to Non-spec-based Legendaries (like Shard of Exodaar for mages, who works for all 3 specs. Does it account for ALL specs, or just the one that it was dropped on?

If a Legendary can drop for your spec, it counts. An easy way to check this is to open the Adventure Guide ingame (Shift-J by default) and click the "Loot" tab without having a dungeon or raid selected. That'll show you which Legendaries are counted for your spec.

02/23/2017 12:47 PMPosted by Amadraimarcy
2) Very similar to the above, how do items like Prydaz/Sephuz/Kil'jaeden DPS/etc work under this system? Does it count for the spec it dropped on, or for all specs?

Same as above.

02/23/2017 12:47 PMPosted by Amadraimarcy
3) The PTR has had "Unidentified <Class> Legendary" items in its database for a while, and it's been speculated that these were a 'failsafe' for people accidentally getting a legendary in the 'wrong spec' and blowing their accrued Bad Luck Protection -- are these unidentified items still going live, are they going to be scrapped in light of the spec-based droprate/BLP ? If they are going live, is it intended behavior that people could play offspecs with low number of legendaries, or none, get these items quickly (since the first 2 legendaries drop faster), and then swap to their 'main spec' as a way to get a few more legendaries 'quickly' (in comparison to the norm) ?

These were part of an experimental concept that we've since decided not to go ahead with, at least for now. The idea wasn't exactly what you're speculating, but our concerns were similar.

02/23/2017 12:47 PMPosted by Amadraimarcy
4) How does BLP 'acquisition' work under this new spec-based system? Do I 'build up' BLP for all specs as I play, or only for the one currently set as my Loot Specialization? If it builds for all of them, this has possible unintended consequences, where once I get an item in 1 spec, I know I should swap to the others and get items 'relatively fast' since the BLP is built up a fair bit (assuming it wasn't RNGesus giving you an item very very early on)

This one I'm actually not certain on the answer, but I'll look into it.

Lore

Community Manager

#31 - Feb. 24, 2017, 1 a.m.

02/23/2017 04:14 PMPosted by Yaboi
So basically if you have utility legendaries you are even more screwed than before because you already have that many legendaries for every spec.

I can see where you're coming from, but I'd make the argument that if you have cross-spec Legendaries and play multiple specs, you're already at an advantage in that they're functional for your other specs. I have the Thunder Focus Tea pants and Soothing Mist shoulders on my Mistweaver; neither of them do anything at all when I play Brewmaster.

Lore

Community Manager

#92 - Feb. 24, 2017, 1:59 a.m.

02/23/2017 05:24 PMPosted by Pelinel
I feel like this comes back to a lot of the utility legendarys are still just "bad" some like Prydaz and Sephuz are better. But there are other's like Acherus Drapes and Uther's Guard that remain disappointing as ever to receive. I leveled a DK as a fun alt, got Acherus Drapes as its first legendary, i am tempted to just delete the character and try again if I had gotten prydaz i wouldn't have felt this way as it has far more value. Or i have been considering leveling my warrior and just hoping for better luck. You mentioned this in the QA but please take a close look at all the legendarys (including healer ones). To make sure there aren't so many egregious outliers, i should emphasize this is a much larger problem for healers right now than DPS.

Yep, this is the important point to remember: if a legendary just sucks, then that's the problem we need to fix. Similarly, if your spec sucks without a particular legendary, then that legendary also needs to be fixed to not be so impactful.

Regarding Prydaz, specifically: It's maybe not the most exciting legendary right now, but it's certainly strong. The stats make it a solid, reliable throughput upgrade, and in the immortal words of Sebudai: "It's pretty easy to figure out how much DPS you're doing as a corpse on the ground."

As for Sephuz: it has a weird, but temporary, issue. When you only have one or two legendaries, it sucks that it does nothing on the fights where you can't proc it. No argument there. Eventually, though, you'll have a third legendary, and it opens up for some interesting gameplay, where you swap it on for fights with a lot of dispels, interrupts, or controllable targets, and swap it out for the ones that don't. It's not always useful, but it's really good when it is. That's not a bad thing.

Those seem to be the two that most commonly come up as "bad," but we'll keep discussing the other options as well. I know there's a few tweaks planned to some that haven't yet hit the PTR.

Overall, though, I just wanted to drive home the point that if you're upset at how long it might take you to get your next Legendary because the ones you have are bad, we want to fix that by making the ones you have better.

Lore

Community Manager

#98 - Feb. 24, 2017, 2:08 a.m.

02/23/2017 06:03 PMPosted by Silkk
We.Want.A.Way.To.Target.Spec.Specific.Slot.Specific. BEST IN SLOT.

A) I think your spacebar is broken.

B) You'll be able to do exactly that through the Relinquished gear tokens in Patch 7.2.

Lore

Community Manager

#109 - Feb. 24, 2017, 2:21 a.m.

02/23/2017 06:11 PMPosted by Silkk
Wait, was this a confirmation that we can actually target slots?

Correct. The current plan is that if you purchase a Relinquished token for, say, shoulders, and it gives you a legendary, it gives you legendary shoulders.

Massive wall of caveats here just because I don't want to over-promise:

This is PTR. Anything can change at any moment. Many things already have.
We don't have a solid handle yet on how long it will take to earn these things, or what the chance of them becoming a legendary will be. We need to be confident that the Broken Shore content itself is stabilized before we can start figuring out things like how quickly you earn Nethershards or how much these tokens cost.
Their primary purpose is still as catch-up gear, similar to what was available on the Timeless Isle or Hellfire Peninsula. We don't consider this a "silver bullet" solve to all legendary-related issues, and aren't trying to make it be one. Still, if you just desperately want that one specific legendary, this might be an option worth considering.

Lore

Community Manager

#112 - Feb. 24, 2017, 2:23 a.m.

02/23/2017 06:16 PMPosted by Ikhj
Adding a targeting legendary system is only addressing the symptom of the much larger problem which is that so many of the DPS legendaries suck because some provide 0 DPS whilst others provide up to 5% more damage.

Wouldn't it be better to address the root cause of the problem which is that so many of these legendaries simply suck? What happened to Blizzard quality?

02/23/2017 05:59 PMPosted by Lore
Yep, this is the important point to remember: if a legendary just sucks, then that's the problem we need to fix. Similarly, if your spec sucks without a particular legendary, then that legendary also needs to be fixed to not be so impactful.

02/23/2017 05:59 PMPosted by Lore
Overall, though, I just wanted to drive home the point that if you're upset at how long it might take you to get your next Legendary because the ones you have are bad, we want to fix that by making the ones you have better.

*twitch*