Alright, Legion Systems Q&A panel getting started now. Live-tweeting in progress.

Focus on making character classes awesome. Lots of talk about DHs are amazing. What about other classes? Lots of work on the class fantasy. A more subtle change - visuals, sounds, animations. Trying to improve as much as they can.

Tried to keep changes under control, but the reality is that some classes needed a lot of work.

Lots of classes that only got minor changes. Frost, arcane mages, were specifically brought up.

Re balance: How much chaos is it to try to get the middle ground? No chaos at all. /s Beta soon, lots of changes will be on display.

Don't look at the balance as far as "this class is overpowered". Focus on playstyle first, number balance comes later.

First pass - getting most classes close on Patchwerk. But how many fights are Patchwerk these days? But actual balance comes with raid ncs.

Why does the nail sticking out get hammered down rather than bringing all the others up? Can't buff everyone because then power inflation goes out of control.

Perception: Nerfs get way more attention than buffs. Generally, a few classes are at the right spot, 2 too high, 6 too low.

Better to only nerf the two high specs than buff the other 34.

Outside of DHs, what other classes are exciting the team? DKs got brought up first - dot snapshotting (which is already gone)

DK new ability, Festering Wounds, hit them, do other abilities, an eventually it pops. Maybe it pops 3, or 5, or just 1.

Trying to reinforce the fantasy. Old fantasy of pulling corpses from ground, but not in now. Maybe multiple pets?

Some cognitive dissonance about how you're the hero and have ashbringer, but so does the ret pally next to you.

Your specialness shouldn't take away from the specialness of others.

Ele shaman? Mage/shadowpriest artifacts - offhands?

Ele shaman no longer use mana. Ele/enh now use "Maelstrom" as a resource. Build up a resource, then use spenders.

Artifact offhands have visuals, but not out yet.

Lots more RNG now it feels. Not about luck, more about unpredictability.

Demo locks? Completely started over with the spec. New rotation, abilities, etc. Need lots of feedback.

Demo locks - no way to permanently enslave dreadlords. Lots of balance concerns.

Demo - summoning waves and waves of demons and empowering them. Use old classics (Shadowbolt, generator), Hand of Gul'dan (spender)

All locks now use soul shards as a resource.

New demon pet - Dreadstalker. Rotational ability that summons a pair. Demonic Empowerment buffs demons already out (Bloodlust-like)

When summoning dreadstalkers, maybe you get imps riding the dreadstalkers.

About character importance - mage class hall. Only 5 members of the order of 6. Not going to Dalaran. Reforming an (unnamed) group from ast

DK runes - only one type of rune. Already feels faceroll. With sep types, the active runes controlled button pushes. Now, burn all at once.

Re level scaling, what about going back to older zones. Grinding because they're easy? Not really.

Not that there's nothing to do now in Warlords, but there's nothing you care about because the rewards are useless. Not the case in Legion.

Disc priests - half damage/half heal? 70% heal, 30% damage. Endless PW:S is gone.

New atonement mix of using damage/healing. Mark allies with a buff, heals go out to that ally when you do damage.

WW, Storm Earth and Fire. Kinda getting out of hand with multi-target. Diff classes have diff strengths/weaknesses across raid tiers.

SEF is supposed to shine in 3-target damage, even when they're not together and cleave-y. Single-target was low, now it's a bit higher.

New SEF - redoing how cumbersome and hard to use it is. Kinda overwhelming to new users. Simplifying, more intuitive. Now a toggle

Semi autonomous, will attack targets you're not attacking when the toggle is on.

Hundreds of new talents. Return to the old talent trees? No. Currently, rows are sharing a theme, feels like they don't matter

Instead of themed rows, themed columns. One column all about movement speed, for example.

New rogue talents - 5 rows have straight throughput. All classes, 4-5 rows are straight throughput. Lots more spec-specific talents.

Only few spec-specific talents now in Warlords. 2/3 of talents spec-specific in Legion.

Combat felt undifferentiated from other specs. Combat getting renamed, now "Outlaw". Lots of ways to be an outlaw.

Scoundrel-type (Han Solo)? Pirate type (cannonballs, grappling hooks)?

Some rows - pick one of three new abilities. Now, new ability, proc, or passive.

Example, fury: Core rotation with no talents, very simple. Or you could pick up 5 new rotational abilities.

Happy place for most specs is 4-5 active abilities. But that's not the limits. Devs want to start low and let you go up.

Marks - can they still use a pet? Most Marks hunters take Lone Wolf on live, so that's what they're doing. BM/Surv still have pets.

If you love being a hunter with a pet, it's clear that BM is the spec for you.

Healers can level as healers. Druids have thorns for example.

Disc always gets talked about getting changed EVERY expansion. Absorbs are overpowered. - Yup, much less absorb going forward.

Offhealing for shadow? Shadow loses Heal/Flash Heal, now has Shadowmend. 2x as good as Flash Heal. Some heal fades as damage.

If the target takes damage, that damage comes out of the shadowmend damage instead.

Artifact catchup - The further you are behind, the faster you can catch up. Offspecs/alts. Hard to keep all offspecs maxed at same time

Devs want folks to stick to a spec. With all this artifact progression, how do you encourage experiments?

One change - swap talents out of combat without cost, action bars will be remembered between specs.

Holy - Chakra gone completely. HW: Serenity, literally the biggest single target heal in the game. Normal, 50% heal, crit, full heal.

All old quests, including removed quests, will count for transmog purposes.

Rogues: some feel the need to constantly swap specs based on single/multi-target. - Addressed via talents

Melee vs ranged in Legion - Devs feel they've been doing better lately. They're still working on it. Hard to learn bosses with lots of elee

Data shows that people go melee->ranged rather than the other way because of that perception.

Timewalker raids? A really cool idea, but the time has not yet come. Will revisit them like ZA/ZG.

Moonkin? Now a brand new spec. Core problem - all based on a cycle of moving a bar back and forth. Playing the UI, not the game.

The bar back-and-forth is now gone. Abilities have their own tradeoffs and spenders. Still heavy on dots, starfall

Tank swaps, boss movement, getting fixed. In 6.2.3.

Active mitigation - too strong. Screw up the AM and you die. Magnitude of effect is decreased. Long-cooldown abilities will act if AM up.

Innervate - coming back, but not to resto. It was always used on itself. Now, back for Balance. Stampeding Roar for feral/guardian.

Innervate will be unique, as other mana control abilities are going away.

Balance affinity as a guardian druid gets you moonkin form.

Guardians can swap to cat form and will do more damage than they do now.

Resolve. Gone! Just straight up gone. It served a need because of how some abilities were designed.

Abilities that relied on Resolve have been redesigned to no longer rely on it.

Combat/Outlaw rogue - Killing Spree wipes raids. Flirted with getting rid of it. Now a talent. Other options avail if you don't want it.

Major glyphs are getting baked into abilities since they're going away.

Female Felguard? No. Making new models, animating them is single the most expensive thing to add. Same with male succubus.

Talked with @nite_moogle. Don't have an answer as to world drop legendaries as BoP/BoE/BoA. They're still designing the system.

What happens when you max out your artifact? Most players won't actually pull that off. Even then, you can upgrade the ilvl via boss drops.

There won't have a crafted item to re roll stats on crafted items, yes they will still be random stats.