This week Joce and Manny cover the new Battle For Azeroth Alpha news from the latest update, as well as the upcoming Arena Spring Championships, and Blizzard’s upcoming appearance at PAX East. They then finish the story of Warchief Vol’jin, as he begins to openly oppose Warchief Garrosh until his untimely death at the hands of the Legion. Finally, Joce and Manny take a look at Raidbots, a way to sim your character without running a program locally. They finish up with a couple of emails about the whispers of Il’gynoth in the Emerald Nightmare raid, and what that might mean in Battle for Azeroth.

Alpha News

2 new patches in as many weeks that brought with them a number of interesting changes

  • Stormsong Valley Opens for testing
    • 3rd and final zone to open in the Kul Tiras
    • Alliance can level through this zone. Horde reach this zone after leveling
    • Filled with mountains and valley, though not as vertical as Highmountain.
  • Many abilities previously off the global cooldown (GCD) were added to the GCD.
    • Game Developer Watcher posted to the forums about the change (linked)
    • 1st pass of an ongoing experiment
    • Reasons for the change such as the pace of combat; telegraphing abilities; and, Burst issues in PvP.
    • Offensive abilities were targeted but there are no plans to put defensive and reactive abilities back on the GCD
  • Gear Sets have been datamined.
    • Uldir Raid Mail Set and Battlefronts Plate Gear
    • Gear in BfA is to be more representative of where it was obtained
    • These are INCOMPLETE
    • Tint variations for LFR, Normal and Heroic with additional flair for Mythic tier for raid gear
    • Battlefronts have tiered armour that adds visual flare from tier 1 to tier 2 to tier 3 (unique to alliance and horde
  • Character Customization
    • Additional customization for older races: Gold Eyes for Blood Elves, Upright Orcs available for characters on Alpha.
    • Upright Undead NPCs
    • What is on peoples wish list?  
  • What to do before BfA guide on Wowhead
    • AotC/Violet Spellwing mount
    • First Aid achievements for real completionists
      • TIL there is a Discord Channel for Achievement hunters!
    • Brawler’s Guild
    • Artifact Appearances
    • Fiendish Hellfire Core and Shackled Ur’zul (Mythic Gul’dan and KJ) going from 100% to 1% drops
    • Talon’s Vengeance rep will likely be a lot harder to grind
  • https://us.battle.net/forums/wow/topic/20762126139#6
  • https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20762166378?page=1#8
  • https://www.wowhead.com/what-to-do-before-battle-for-azeroth

Arena Spring Finals

MDI Time Trials Have Begun

Pax East

Raidbots

Raidbots is a website which allows you to run sims to determine a number of things for your character.

  • Can determine your stat weights, top gear, best talents in your current gear or your current max potential dps.
  • Raidbots is a online alternative for running SimCraft on your own system.
  • Stat Weights: Guides give a general outline for a class and spec. Stat weights vary a number of different factors. Depending on how much you want to min-max.
  • Top Gear and gear compare: You compare switching separate pieces to see what the best combination or you can compare entire sets of gear against each other.
  • Talent compare: Determine what the potential difference in your dps will be between talent choices and talent builds.
  • For all of the modules you have options to change the fight profile (AoE,Patchwork, etc); input lag; fight length; even the # of Pantheon Trinkets.
  • You can use armory profiles but using the simulationcraft addon will provide more accurate results and is needed for some modules like the gear compare.
  • https://www.raidbots.com/simbot
  • https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/simulationcraft

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