Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes: July 26th

(Source)

Hello! Here are this week’s notes for Dragonflight Alpha:

DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES

The Waking Shores

NEW FEATURES

Dragonriding

The Dragonriding Talent Tree is now available.

Dragonriding now features advanced turning tech that helps the drakes feel more weighty and turning more of a decision.

While boosted to very fast speeds, new tech will adjust the camera’s field-of-view. This can be disabled with the “Reduce Camera Motion” option inside the “Motion Sickness” section of the “Accessibility” menu.

When running into objects and walls, velocity is now lost based on angle and collision duration.

Dragon Glyphs are hidden throughout the skies over the Waking Shores! Fly through them to unlock achievements.

The Dragonriding Skill Track is now accessible at the dragonriding trainer Lithragosa located in Skytop Observatory.

Not all skills are displayed or implemented, but the player may earn points by collecting Dragon Glyphs and spend them for progression.

The Renewed Proto-Drake is now customizable in the Rostrum of Transformation.

NEW DUNGEONS
Developers’ note: Throughout the testing period, character levels will be scaled when entering Dragonflight dungeons. When this happens, the amount of talent points that your character will have available will reflect the original level, not the scaled level.

Ruby Life Pools

CHARACTER LEVEL

Developers’ note: With each phase, we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state . After making a new template character, make sure to talk to Questzertauren and he will prepare you for any available content.

Maximum Level: 62

CLASSES

NEW TALENT SYSTEM

Mage

Developers’ note: The Mage trees in Dragonflight are focused on offering new talents to explore, supporting underrepresented archetypes and builds, and allowing for cross-specialization abilities. We want Mages to feel like they aren’t limited to their primary school of magic, and with enough commitment, they are capable of harnessing powerful abilities from a variety of different magic sources at once. The specialization trees are built to maintain the core fantasy of each specialization while tidying up existing gameplay through talents such as a reworked Alexstrasza’s Fury for Fire Mages, Wintertide for Frost Mages, and introducing a new major cooldown, Arcane Surge, for Arcane Mages. In addition to the talent changes above, we’re making several baseline changes to spells such as Ignite spreading via Fire Blast instead of Phoenix Flames and Flurry moving to a default instant cast, charge-based design. We’re hoping these new trees and talent designs allow you to customize your character in new and exciting ways and we’re looking forward to your feedback!

Paladin: Protection and Retribution

Developers’ note: With the Paladin talent trees in Dragonflight, we wanted to embrace the class’ knight heritage and the full breadth of its group stewardship. In the class tree, Paladins will see your utility front-and-center, and whether you prefer the fantasy of the crusader or the guardian, we hope that new options such as Seal of the Templar, Recompense, and Afterimage will help you lean into your vision. Blessing of Spellwarding has additionally been made class-wide. Protection Paladins will find a returning Eye of Tyr in your spec tree, as well as an array of options to tailor and enhance many of your signature abilities (both offensive and defensive) to best emphasize your own playstyle. Retribution Paladins will find options that integrate Consecration into their core rotation, a new vision for the returning ability, Exorcism, and other ways of obtaining Holy Power depending on playstyle in addition to new and returning enhancements to their iconic abilities.

In this week’s build, Paladins will have access to their new Class, Protection and Retribution talent trees. While we’re still working on the Holy specialization, we wanted to bring our other specialization trees online early so we can get community feedback as early as possible. The Holy tree currently in this week’s Alpha is the existing Shadowlands’ talent tree, in addition to containing all of their other abilities. This is placeholder and not indicative of their final tree, and we will be bringing the Holy tree to Alpha as soon as its ready.

Known Issue: Unlearning the Crusade talent while also having the Avenging Wrath talent from the Class tree will cause you to keep Crusade and it’s override effect on Avenging Wrath. This can be fixed via relogging and will be corrected in a future Alpha build.

PROFESSIONS

Jewelcrafting

Developers’ note: Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, Jewelcrafting has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. While cutting gems and Prospecting remain the focus of Jewelcrafting in Dragonflight, we’re also expanding the amount of novelty items that Jewelcrafting can craft, with new Statues, toys and other consumables. We’re also interested in feedback on the new Primalist gems and the Tiered Medallion Setting consumable, which will allow you to add additional sockets to your Dragonflight Necklaces.

Leatherworking

Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, Leatherworking has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. In addition to feedback on the recipes and consumable items from Leatherworking, we’re also interested in feedback on the new Equip and Set effects that can be found on multiple crafted Leathworking pieces.

Specializations

Jewelcrafting

Faceting — Improve at cutting gems, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill for all gem cuts per point in this specialization.

Fire — Improve at cutting gems with fire, gaining +1 Crafting Skill for all fire cuts per point in this specialization.

Enterprising — Improve in the business of jewelcrafting, gaining +1 Crafting Skill for miscellaneous crafts per point in this specialization.

Prospecting — Improve in the delicate task of prospecting to increase yield and efficiency, gaining +1 Resourcefulness when prospecting per point in this specialization.

Leatherworking

Chain Armor Crafting — Improve at making mail armor, gaining +1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.

Intricate Chain — Improve at making intricate chain armor for the hands, feet, shoulders and waist, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.

Primordial Leatherworking — Improve at Primordial Leatherworking, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill when crafting elemental, bestial, and decay Leatherworking patters per point in this specialization.

Decaying Grasp — Improve at crafting decay patterns, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.

Known Issues

Existing Specialization trees will be wiped for this week’s Alpha build. Players will need to re-learn their specialization paths, which can be expedited by buying Specialization points via the Professor Instructataur’s Top Secret Guide consumable on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor.

Leatherworking: Feral Hide Drums cannot be crafted. This will be fixed in a later build.

Jewelcrafting: Prospecting Ore does not currently differentiate between different Quality, resulting in the same prospecting output regardless of Ore Quality. This will be fixed in a later build.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSBILITY

New HUD UI — Get ready for a fully updated and customizable Heads Up Display (HUD) User Interface (UI) that’s been created with contemporary displays in mind, designed to be effective, attractive, and accessible.

Unit frames are now in a new default location near the player.

Edit Mode

Added the grid checkbox and slider

Added Player, Target and Focus frame

Added stance bar

Added “Snap to Right Side” to the right action bar settings

The Barbershop services are now free of cost.