The leader of the Liquid MMO guild (previously Limit) had a chance to interview Ion Hazzikostas about various Dragonflight things. Below is a summary of the new bits of information we learned from it:
Season 4
Overall they are super happy with how season 4 is playing out and they will probably go back to this setup at the end of the next expansion
Though the exact implementation of Dinars and upgrade essences will not return but they are thinking about how to continue with bad luck protection
Raiding
Mythic raid difficulty isn’t really meant for PuGs, the mythic raid lockout is meant to encourage people to stay together with a group
Cross realm raiding won’t be available right at the release of a new raid but it’s likely it’ll be available sooner
Faction changes should not break your lockout, they want to change that
Ion has a question for the community: How would you feel about mythic raiding releasing at the same time as normal/heroic raiding?
Guilds
Cross realm guilds might become available later down the line
They hope to have cross faction guilds available before the end of Dragonflight
Classes
They want it to be the most optimal raid setup where you have at least 1 of each class in your raid group
It should not be absolutely mandatory that you have every buff available in your group, if it ends up that way they will be looking to tune that down
Evokers will get Heroism/Bloodlust
Another class will get battle rez, likely paladins but they are not 100% sure yet
Druids and Priests will be getting Alpha change communication soon
Professions
They will take a look at the amount of consumables (oils/stones/armor kits etc) you need for raids/m+
Dungeons/M+
With the plans to reintroduce old dungeons for seasons in M+ in DF they will be able to add more new DF dungeons during the expansion
They don’t have anything to announce yet, but they are looking to equalize the tuning/difficulty between m+/raids/pvp so that m+ players can also more actively go for the best ilvl loot
This morning we have a new set of hotfixes that include class ability scaling in Fated raids, more fixes for Lower Karazhan and a fix for earning Vicious Saddles.
On the Alpha side of things we have a new build with a ton of changes for most if not every class, a new dungeon, mining and Havoc Demon Hunters!
Hello Adventurers! Here are Dragonflight’s development notes for this week:
NEW FEATURES
DRAGONRIDING
Updated the double jump Launch and Skyward Ascent to both be more reliable in their directionality and movement.
Re-tuned the turn rate for dragon isle drakes to be more lenient, including a feature wherein the player’s turn rate scales with speed – lower speeds feature quicker turns, while top speeds still come with a need for slightly more planning.
Updated the Dragonriding trait window, bringing the zone unlocks and basic skills into the same pane as the unlockable traits for Dragonriding.
Developers’ note: We discovered early in Alpha that we’d need a solution for players who rely on /follow or similar features to engage with World of Warcraft, as following wasn’t immediately compatible with Dragonriding. To address this, we’ve added “Ride Along”. Dragonriders can speak with Lithragosa (the Dragonriding Trainer) to opt into this new functionality. With Ride Along on, a player in your party may interact with your Dragon Isle Drake to transform into a whelp that will follow alongside your drake. If you are someone who has relied on /follow or have other players help guide you around Azeroth (or find Ride Along to be an interesting accessibility option for other reasons), please try this feature out and share your feedback with us!
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.
Halls of Infusion
CLASSES
NEW TALENT SYSTEM
CLASS TUNING
This week’s build has a number of adjustments to various talents and abilities across many specializations. These changes are the result of ongoing efforts to tune the damage and healing of characters. More changes should be expected in the coming weeks. Your feedback is appreciated.
DEATH KNIGHT
Class Tree
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Rune Mastery increased to 2 ranks. Duration increased to 8 seconds (was 6 seconds) and now grants 3% Strength per rank.
Icy Talons reduced to 2 ranks (was 3). Melee attack speed per rank increased to 3% (was 2%).
Unholy Bond reduced to 2 ranks (was 3).
Will of the Necropolis increased to 2 ranks (was 1). Damage reduction below 30% health is now 20/35% (was previously 30%).
Blood Draw increased to 2 ranks (was 1). Cooldown now reduced by 60 seconds at rank 2.
New Talent: Unholy Endurance – Increases Lichborne duration by 2 seconds and while active damage taken is reduced by 15%. Located directly below Lichborne.
New Talent: Clenching Grasp – Death Grip slows enemy movement speed by 50% for 6 seconds. Located directly below Brittle.
Improved Death Strike max ranks reduced to 1 (was 3).
Unholy
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
New
Feasting Strikes – Festering Strike and Scourge Strike/Clawing Shadows have 15% chance to generate 1 Rune.
Runic Mastery – Increases Maximum Runic Power by 10/20.
Plaguebringer – Scourge Strike causes your disease damage to occur 150% more quickly for 5 seconds.
Magus of the Dead – Apocalypse and Army of the Dead also summon a Magus of the Dead who hurls Frostbolts and Shadow Bolts at your foes.
Magus of the Dead’s Shadow Bolt damage increased by 20%.
Magus of the Dead’s Frostbolt damage increased by 10%.
Magus of the Dead’s Frostbolt slow duration increased to 6 seconds and 60% slow (was 4 seconds and 50%).
Ruptured Viscera – When your ghouls expire, they explode in viscera dealing Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
Commander of the Dead – Dark Transformation also empowers your Gargoyle and Army of the Dead for 30 seconds, increasing their damage by 40%.
Eternal Agony – Death Coil increases the duration of Dark Transformation by 1 second.
Coil of Devastation – Death Coil causes the target to take an additional 35% of the direct damage dealt over 4 seconds.
Rotten Touch – Sudden Doom causes your next Death Coil to also increase your Scourge Strike damage against the target by 30% for 6 seconds.
Superstrain – Your Virulent Plague also applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague.
Plaguebearer – Inflict disease upon your enemies spreading Festering Wounds equal to the amount currently active on your target to 8 nearby enemies (45 second cooldown, 30 Runic Power). Not yet implemented, but coming in a future build!
Removed
Deadly Coil
Improved Scourge Strike
Changes
Death Coil – Runic Power cost reduced to 30 (was 40).
Unholy Command – Now reduces the cooldown of Dark Transformation by 8/15 seconds (was reduces the cooldown of Dark Transformation when dealing damage with Death Coil. ).
Epidemic – Damage increased by 20%.
Army of the Damned – Now reduces the cooldown of Apocalypse by 45 seconds (no longer reduced by Dark Transformation). No longer summons a Magus of the Dead when Apocalypse or Army of the Dead are cast.
Summon Gargoyle – Duration reduced to 25 seconds (was 35 seconds). Now gains 1% damage per 1 runic power spent (was per 2 runic power).
Morbidity – Damage per rank reduced to 1/3% (was 3/6%). Festering Wound no longer increases the damage of Morbidity and now also increases damage from Blood Plague and Frost Fever if Superstrain is talented.
DEMON HUNTER
Havoc
Developers’ note: After 10,000 years… today’s build includes early versions of Demon Hunter’s class and Havoc talent trees.
The class tree houses many of the familiar utility and defensive abilities associated with each spec and arranges them in spec-themed sections to the left (including modifiers to Fury and movement speed) and right (including Brands and options to empower them), with shared damage bonuses centered (including The Hunt and modifiers to Metamorphosis). We hope to see players take advantage of the new talent system to make choices that match their preferences, that can be tailored to meet the challenges they will face, and that create new gameplay opportunities by combining effects in ways not previously possible.
The Havoc tree takes abilities from the spec’s past and present, then puts them alongside reworked and all-new talents to provide multiple gameplay and damage output styles to invest in. Notable among them are talents that provide incentives for secondary stats like Critical Strike Chance and Mastery, as well as talents that grant significant bonuses to the skills of your choice like Chaos Strike, Eye Beam, and Immolation Aura. We hope the new trees provide opportunities to make talent builds that feel custom and distinct.
While we’re still working on the Vengeance specialization, we wanted to bring the Class & Havoc trees online so we can get community feedback as early as possible. The Vengeance 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 Vengeance tree online as soon as its ready. Regardless of whether you’re checking out these Demon Hunter class and Havoc talents online or trying them out in the Alpha, we hope you’ll enjoy and share your thoughts with us!
Known Issues
There are several talents that are not fully implemented yet. These are tagged with NYI (Not Yet Implemented) in their Talent name.
EVOKER
Class Tree
Damage of all abilities reduced by 8% except Azure Strike, Shattering Star, and Unravel.
Disintegrate damage reduced by an additional 5%.
Living Flame damage reduced by an additional 12.5%.
Enkindled reduced to 3% per rank (was 5%).
Scarlet Adaptation damage cap reduced by 19.5% (matches total Living Flame damage reduction).
Devastation
Pyre damage reduced by an additional 14%.
Azure Strike damage increased by 5%.
Shattering Star damage increased by 7%.
Arcane Intensity reduced to 8% per rank (was 10%).
Might of the Aspects reduced to 7.5% per rank (was 10%).
Volatility reduced to 10% per rank (was 15%).
Charged Blast reduced to 5% per stack (was 7%).
Preservation
Temporal Anomaly absorbs damage, rather than healing. Absorb shield stacks up to 3 times and lasts 15 seconds. Now only shields 2 allies at a time (was 3).
Temporal Anomaly will immediately slow down upon reaching an ally, even if they are full health. Speed adjusted to 10 yards per second base, 2.5 yards per sec when reaching an ally.
Temporal Anomaly mana cost reduced to 7.5% base mana (was 11.5%).
Temporal Disruption removed.
Flow State renamed to Rush of Vitality.
New: Flow State – Empower spells cause time to move 5/10% faster for you for 5 seconds. In Resonating Sphere’s old position.
Nozdormu’s Teachings causes Temporal Anomaly to shield 1 additional target, for a total of 3 targets each pulse.
Resonating Sphere now an A/B choice against Nozdormu’s Teachings. Causes Echo to be applied by Temporal Anomaly at 30% value.
HUNTER
Class Tree
Survival Hunters: Corrected a missing connection between Kill Command and Improved Mend Pet on the class tree.
Alpha Predator’s value has been lowered to 15% (was 30%).
Improved Traps now also lowers the cooldown of Hi-Explosive Trap.
Stampede now snares targets hit by 30%, and you and your pets gain 10% increased critical strike chance against targets hit by your Stampede.
Hunter’s Agility is once again Avoidance.
Camouflage no longer links directly to Improved Traps. The choice node below Survival of the Fittest now links to Born to be Wild.
New Talent: Serrated Shots – Serpent Sting and your bleed damage is increased by 10/20% damage. This value increases to 20/40% against targets below 30% HP.
New Talent: Arctic Bola – Aimed Shot/Cobra Shot/Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite have a chance to fling a bola out at your target that bounces 2/4 times and deals increased damage per point. Targets struck by the bola are snared by 20% for 3 seconds.
Beast Mastery
The top of the Beast Mastery tree has been shuffled around a bit, and now starts with Cobra Shot rather than Barbed Shot.
Barbed Shot damage has been increased by 75%.
Loaded Quiver has been removed. Barbed Shot is now always 2 charges.
Barbed Wrath is now 1 point (was 2) and it no longer affects Aspect of the Wild.
Wild Call has been reduced to 1 rank.
Call of the Wild cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes.
The Bloody Frenzy that adjusted Barbed Shot Frenzy stack generation has been removed.
New Talent: Brutal Companion – When Barbed Shot causes a 3rd stack of Frenzy, your pet automatically uses their special attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) with increased damage.
Aspect of the Wild has been redesigned – Aspect of the Wild now fires a Cobra Shot at your target and another nearby target. While Aspect of the Wild is active, Cobra Shot’s Focus cost is reduced by 10, and each Cobra Shot fires a Second Cobra Shot at a nearby target.
New choice node below Aspect of the Wild:
Each temporary beast summoned reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 5 seconds.
Cobra Shot damage increased by 30% while Aspect of the Wild is active.
Several talents shifted around past the first gate due to the above changes, but the tree’s structure is very similar.
Marksmanship
Dead Eye now also reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot.
Windrunner’s Guidance has been lowered to 25% critical strike damage bonus.
New choice node below Wailing Arrow:
Wailing Arrow resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire and grants a charge of Aimed Shot.
Wailing Arrow now fires 5 wind arrows at your primary target, and up to 10 split between any secondary targets.
Crack Shot lowered to a 1-point talent.
Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus have swapped spots.
Survival
Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, and related talents should be working.
Explosive Expert tooltip updated, it has no interaction with Kill Shot and is just some cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs.
Birds of Prey has been redesigned – Kill Shot now strikes up to 3 extra targets while Coordinated Assault is active.
New choice node against Birds of Prey: Bombardier – The cooldown of Wildfire Bombs is reset when Coordinated Assault is activated, and when it fades.
Guerilla Tactics increases the initial damage of Wildfire Bombs by 50% (was 100%).
Fury of the Eagle once again grants 50% critical strike chance against targets below 20% HP.
Ruthless Marauder increases the HP threshold for increases critical strikes by 5% per rank rather than increasing critical strike chance.
MAGE
Class Tree
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
New
Volatile Detonation – Greatly increases the effect of Blast Wave’s knockback. Blast Wave’s cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds.
Reflection – Teleports you back to where you last Blinked. Only usable within 8 seconds of Blinking. 45 second cooldown.
Energized Barriers – When your barrier receives melee attacks, you have a 10% chance to be granted 1 Fire Blast/1 Fingers of Frost/ 1 Clearcasting charge. Casting your barrier removes all snare effects.
Freezing Cold – Enemies hit by Cone of Cold are frozen in place for 4 seconds. Your spells will not break this effect.
Time Manipulation – Casting Fire Blast/Ice Lance on Frozen targets/Arcane Missiles reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 1 second.
Temporal Warp – While you have Temporal Displacement or other similar effects, you may use Time Warp to grant yourself 30% Haste for 40 seconds.
Class Talents
Cone of Cold – Now learned baseline for all Mages.
Meteor – Now deals 20% additional initial damage for Frost/Arcane Mages.
Shifting Power – Now reduces spell cooldowns by 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
Arcane Warding – Now reduces magic damage taken by 2/4% (was 3/6%).
Arcane
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Arcane Bombardment – Now increases Arcane Barrage damage to enemies below 35% health by 100% damage (previously was 50/100% but has been reduced to a 1 rank node).
Arcane Echo – Damage increased by 60% and max ranks reduced to 1 (was 2).
Arcane Surge – Now grants a burst of mana on cast so that the player can immediately start casting an Arcane Blast.
Rule of Threes – Now a choice node with Arcane Familiar, both have moved to row 5 (swapped with Arcane Tempo).
Evocation – Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds (was 120 seconds).
Improved Evocation has been removed.
Siphon Storm – Converted to a single node (was previously choice node with Improved Evocation).
Orb Barrage – Converted to a single node (was previously a choice node with Orb Barrage).
Orb Barrage – Now also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2 seconds when Clearcasting is consumed.
Prodigious Savant – Increased value to 20/40% (was 10/20%).
Nether Tempest – Damage increased by 15%.
Nether Tempest – Position on the tree has moved toward the center of the talent tree as a choice node with Reverberate, connecting from Mana Adept and Improved Arcane Barrage.
Reverberate – Position on the tree has moved toward the center of the talent tree as a choice node with Nether Tempest, connecting from Mana Adept and Improved Arcane Barrage.
Conjure Mana Gem – Now restores 25% mana (was 10%), and grants 5% increased spell power for 10 seconds baseline.
Cascading Power – Now grants up to 2 stacks of Clearcasting when consuming a Mana Gem (previously granted Spell Power).
Presence of Mind – Cooldown reduced to 45 seconds (was 60 seconds).
Fire
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Hot Streak has been moved to be baseline.
New Talent: Fervent Flickering – Ignite damage has a 5% chance to reduce the cooldown of Fire Blast by 1 second.
Fire Blast – Now always crits.
Incendiary Eruptions – No longer a choice node.
Pyromaniac – Swapped positions with Pyroclasm, now a choice node with Molten Skyfall.
Fiery Rush and Kindling no longer a choice node.
Improved Blazing Barrier has been removed.
Fire Blast Rank 2 talent has been removed.
Frost
Ice Lance – Damage reduced by 10%.
Wintertide – Now a 2 point node. Ice Lance damage increased by 20% (was 30%).
Chain Reaction – Now a 1 point node. The Ice Lance damage increase effect is now 1% (was 1.5%).
Fractured Frost – Frostbolt has a 25/50% chance to hit up to 2 additional targets (was 20/40%).
Icy Propulsion now reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins without requiring Icy Veins to be active. Now a 1 point node.
Icy Propulsion single target ability cooldown reduction is now 2 seconds (was 1 second).
Snowstorm – Now a 2 point node.
Winter’s Chill functionality is now granted by default when Flurry is learned.
Winter’s Chill talent has been removed.
MONK
Class Talents
New Talent: Summon White Tiger Statue – Summons a White Tiger Statue at the target location for 30 seconds, pulsing damage to all enemies every 2 seconds for 30 seconds.
Developer note: This medium-duration area of effect cooldown is designed to bring the pain to enemies who dare doubt the wrath of the White Tiger.
Roll Rank 2 now correctly communicates that it grants an extra charge.
Windwalking tooltip now correctly displays speed increase instead of size change.
Generous Pour, Close to Heart, and Save Them All talents are now implemented.
Mistweaver
Unison – Soothing Mist heals a second injured ally within 15 yards for 100% of the amount healed (was 50%).
Awakened Faeline, Misty Peaks, Rapid Diffusion, Invoke Yu’lon’s Enveloping Mist mana reduction, and Ancient Concordance are now implemented.
Zen Reverberation triggers a second Zen Pulse at 50% effectiveness (was 30%).
Accumulating Mist increases Zen Pulse’s damage and healing by 15% per stack (was 10%).
Invoker’s Delight now scales its duration down to 8 seconds when talented into Gift of the Celestials.
Jade Bond’s Gust of Mist buff increased to 25% (was 12%).
Known Issue: Ancient Concordance’s tooltip displays the incorrect target count for Blackout Kick’s cleave. The intended functionality of this is to hit 2 targets with 1 point and 3 targets with 2 points.
SHAMAN
Elemental
Earthquake – Damage reduced by 25%.
Chain Lightning – Damage increased by 25%. (Elemental only)
Lava Beam – Damage increased by 25%.
Lightning Bolt – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
Lava Burst – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
Earth Shock – Damage reduced by 20%.
Elemental Blast – Damage reduced by 20%. (Elemental only)
Lightning Rod – Deals 20% of Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt damage (was 25%).
Enhancement
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Stormstrike now replaces Primal Strike.
Doom Winds now does some minor damage when you activate it.
Ice Strike’s Frost Shock buff now highlights Frost Shock
Alpha Wolf now works with Chain Lightning, rather than Crash Lightning.
Improved Stormbringer renamed Stormblast.
Unruly Winds chance raised to 100%.
Ascendance is now a choice node with Deeply Rooted Elements.
Thorim’s Invocation now remembers whether you last used Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, and will use that spell instead of always Lightning Bolt.
Chain Lightning Rank 2 has been added into the Chain Lightning/Crash Lightning interactions and is no longer a talent.
New Talent: Crashing Storms – Chain Lightning jumps to 2 additional targets, and also increases Crash Lightning damage by 40%.
Forceful winds is now 45% damage per stack (was 35%).
Gathering Storms is now a 1-point talent (was 2). Value increased to 15%, and there’s a maximum of 10 stacks of Gathering Storms.
Hot Hand is now a 2-point talent (was 1).
Elemental Assault adjusted to be 10/20% Stormstrike damage (was 7/15%). Maelstrom weapon chance is now 50/100% per rank.
Lava Burst is affected by Enhancement mastery.
Primal Primer is no longer an option on the tree.
Hailstorm now gains bonus damage from up to 10 Maelstrom Weapon charges spent to work better with Overflowing Maelstrom. The bonus targets is still capped at 5.
Nature’s Fury now works correctly with the immediate damage from Ascendance.
Feral Spirits is now a 90 second cooldown.
Elemental Spirits no longer reduces Feral Spirit cooldown.
Restoration
Water Totem Mastery – Consuming Tidal Waves reduces the cooldown of Cloudburst, Healing Stream, Healing Tide, Mana Spring, Mana Tide, and Poison Cleansing Totem by 0.5 seconds (was 0.25 seconds).
WARLOCK
Class Talents
New
Abyss Walker – Using Demonic Circle: Teleport or your Demonic Gateway reduces all damage you take by 4% for 10 seconds.
Gorefiend’s Resolve – Targets resurrected with Soulstone resurrect with 40% additional health and 30% additional mana.
Fel Synergy – Soul Leech also heals you for 25% and your pet for 50% of the absorption it grants.
Resolute Barrier – Attacks received that deal at least 5% of your health decrease Unending Resolve’s cooldown by 10 seconds. Cannot occur more than once every 20 seconds.
Soul Armor – When your health drops below 35%, the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link is increased by an additional 5%.
Demonic Resilience – Reduces the chance you will be critically struck by 4%. All damage your primary demon takes is reduced by 15%.
Summon Soulkeeper (was Summon Jailer) – Summons a Soulkeeper that periodically blasts nearby enemies.
Inquisitor’s Gaze– Summons an Inquisitor’s Eye that attacks your enemies.
Removed
Pact of the Annihilan
Pact of the Eredar
Pact of the Imp Mother
Decimating Bolt
Dimensional Rift
Changes
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Claw of Endereth is now a 1-point talent.
Affliction
New
Malefic Affliction – Malefic Rapture causes your active Unstable Affliction to deal 10% additional damage, up to 30%, for the rest of its duration.
Doom Blossom – If Corruption damages a target affected by your Unstable Affliction, it has a 10% chance per stack of Malefic Affliction to deal Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
Dread Touch – If Malefic Affliction exceeds 3 stacks, the target instead takes 20% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 6 seconds.
Grim Reach – When Darkglare deals damage, it deals 50% of that damage to all enemies affected by your damage over time effects.
Soul-Eater’s Gluttony – Whenever Unstable Affliction deals damage, the cooldown of Soul Rot is reduced by 0.5 seconds.
Removed
Malefic Wrath
Deathbolt
Death Dealer
Pact of the Nathrezim
Deliberate Malice
Changes
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Sacrolash’s Dark Strike now extends Curses by 0.5/1 second (was 1/2 seconds).
Creeping Death no longer decreases the duration of Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, or Siphon Life.
Soul Flame’s icon has been changed.
Vile Taint’s cooldown is now 30 seconds (was 20 seconds).
Calamitous Crescendo is now a 2-point talent.
Destruction
Infernal Brand – Your Infernal’s melee attacks cause its target to take 3%/6% increased damage from its Immolation, stacking up to 15 times (was 15%/30%).
Rolling Havoc – Now stacks up to 5 times (was 10) and lasts 5 seconds (was 8 seconds).
Backdraft – Now affects Soul Fire.
Chaos Bolt – Damage reduced by 30%.
Incinerate – Damage reduced by 30%.
Dimensional Rift – Damage reduced by 30%.
Immolate – Damage reduced by 17%.
Rain of Fire – Damage reduced by 17%.
Shadowburn – Damage reduced by 50%.
Conflagrate – Damage reduced by 15%.
Soul Fire – Damage reduced by 25%.
Fire and Brimstone – Incinerate now hits all enemies near your target for 13%/25% damage (was 7%/15%).
Mastery: Chaotic Energies – No longer reduces the Warlock’s damage taken.
Developers’ note: With its access to powerful defensive talents in the class tree, Destruction Warlocks do not need additional survival bonuses.
Demonology
New
Reign of Tyranny – Active Wild Imps grant 1 stack of Demonic Servitude. Active greater demons grant 2 stacks of Demonic Servitude. Demonic Tyrant deals 3% additional damage for each stack of Demonic Servitude active at the time of his summon.
Guillotine – Your Felguard hurls his axe towards the target location, erupting when it lands and dealing Shadowflame damage every 1 second for 8 seconds to nearby enemies. While unarmed, your Felguard’s basic attacks deal damage to all nearby enemies and attacks 50% faster.
Removed
Demonic Consumption
Changes
Ner’zhul’s Volition has been updated – When Nether Portal summons a demon, it has a 2/4% chance per Soul Shard spent to summon an additional demon.
Nether Portal’s cast time reduced to 1.5 seconds (was 2.5 seconds).
The Expendables and Stolen Power have swapped places and moved to row 9.
WARRIOR
General Developer Notes
Warrior has undergone a tuning pass to bring it more in line with the other classes.
This week we’ve experimented a bit more with the Warrior class tree, trying to build in more flexibility and choices throughout the middle of the tree. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this comparative to previous weeks.
Stances – No update here, still working on some ideas on our end.
We’re experimenting with nodes specific to specs within the Warrior class tree. So, for example, War Machine has different values per spec, this gives us better control of balance and grants more tools to enhance what makes each specialization unique.
Signet of Tormented Kings – We’ve added four new nodes in place of Signet, two for Arms and two for Fury and Protection will get its own variants in a future update. These are not final but we’re feeling good about the general approach and would like to hear your feedback on these new talents.
Added a few placeholder nodes where there will be new choices in the future to give players an idea of what the complete tree will look like.
We’ve had a couple of weeks of big updates for Warriors and want to set expectations that next week’s update will be light.
Class Tree
Changed some pathing and node positions to allow for more flexible choices.
Cruel Strikes now grants 1.5% Critical Strike chance per rank. This will be changed in a future build.
Quick Thinking now grants 1.5% Haste per rank. This will be changed in a future build
Reinforced Plates now increases your armor by 15% per rank (was 30% of your Strength).
Removed Dauntless Duelist from the talent tree.
Frothing Berserker now applies to only Rampage, Mortal Strike, Cleave and Revenge.
Overwhelming rage is now 2 ranks that grant 15 max rage each.
Crushing Force is now 2 ranks and grants 30% damage and 7.5% crit chance to Slam per rank.
Removed Signet of Tormented Kings.
New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Berserker – Activating Avatar or Recklessness casts the other at reduced effectiveness. Effects lasts 4 seconds.
New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Titan – Activating Avatar or Reckless casts Odyn’s Fury at reduced effectiveness. Effects last 4 seconds.
New Fury Talent: Memory of a Tormented Warlord – Activating Avatar or Thunderous Roar casts Recklessness at reduced effectiveness.
New Arms Talent: Memory of a Tormented Blademaster – Activating Avatar or Bladestorm the other at reduced effectiveness. Effects last 4 seconds.
War Machine is now split into different versions per spec to allow for different values for each.
Massacre now adds 5% to execute range rather than 15% for Arms and Protection to allow for more execute modifiers.
Massacred now reduces the cooldown of Execute for Fury by 1.5 seconds.
Avatar now generates 20 rage.
Elysian Might should now correctly work outside of the Shadowlands.
Shattering Throw is now a choice node so players can choose between the existing immunity break ability and a lower cooldown variant that is instant but no longer breaks immunities.
Honed Reflexes changed to reduce cooldowns by 0.5 seconds rather than 1 second.
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
Dual Wield Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
One-Handed Weapon Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
Armored to the Teeth now grants Strength equal to 3.5% of your Armor.
Furious Blows has been redesigned to now give 5% auto attack speed.
Arms Developer Notes
We did a lot of work this week on rage generation, we want this to feel a bit different that it does in the current live game, we generally don’t want you to feel rage starved but we also don’t want you to be overflowing with it. So, we’ve taken steps to ramp down how much rage you are obtaining while still trying to allow you to use your abilities when you want and need.
We’re still planning to put some more time into the central branch of the tree which is still a bit sparse.
We’ve also added some placeholder nodes to the Bladestorm choices to give players an idea of what’s to come.
Arms
Mortal Strike damage reduced to 174% of attack power to allow for talents modifying it (was 194%).
Sharpened Blades now deals 10% increased critical damage and increases Execute’s chance to crit by 5%.
Sharpened Blades now only effects the critical damage of Mortal Strike and Execute.
Impale now grants 7.5% increased critical damage per rank instead of 10%.
Exploit the Weakness modifies Tactician by 1% (was 1.6%).
Battlelord – Rage reduction changed to 10 (was 15) and now a 30% chance to reset Mortal Strike.
Lowered the chance for Bloodsurge to trigger to 10% (was 25%).
Bloodborne now grants 7.5% increased bleed damage per rank.
Bloodletting now increases the duration of your bleeds by 3 seconds and increases critical strike chance of bleeds by 5%.
Sudden Death procs are no longer free and now cost rage.
Chance to trigger Sudden Death reduced slightly.
Overpower reduced to 97% of attack power to allow for talents modifying it (was 117%).
Dreadnaught damage reduced to 31% of attack power (was 46%).
Execute’s damage has been reduced to 132% attack power to allow for talents that improve it (was 170%).
Rend reduced to 115% of attack power to allow for talents that improve it (was 133%).
Deft Experience – Now increases Mastery by 1.5% and also increases the damage of Rend’s initial strike by 50% per rank.
Valor in Victory – Increases Versatility by 1.5% and now reduces the cooldown of Die by the Sword by 15 seconds per rank.
Critical Thinking – Now increases critical strike chance by 1.5% and now also increases the critical strike damage of Whirlwind and Cleave by 10% per rank.
Fury Developer Notes
As a result of our tuning pass using two-handed and one-handed weapon builds should now have more similar damage numbers.
We’re not happy with Cadence of Fujieda as it is sharing a very similar space with Frenzy and we’re looking at other designs which would probably bring Frenzy back up to four stacks.
We’ve also added some placeholder nodes to a few places to give players an idea of what’s to come.
We are experimenting internally with the idea of letting the auto attack / Annihilator build not be weapon type specific.
Fury
Added some pathing and moved some nodes to make for more flexible options.
Slaughtering Strikes now grants 10% damage per stack for Raging blow and 3% per stack from Annihilator.
Deft Experience now gives 1.5% Mastery per rank, and also reduces the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.5 seconds per rank.
Swift Strikes now grants 1.5% Haste per rank (was 2% per rank).
Critical Thinking now grants 1.5% Critical Strike Chance per rank (was 2% per rank).
Depths of Insanity now makes Recklessness lasts 4 seconds longer (was 5 seconds).
Dual Wield Specialization now grants 5% increased damage (was 10%).
Deafening Crash now increases the duration of Siegebreaker by 2 seconds (was 3 seconds) and increases the critical strike chance of Raging Blow by 5% (was 10%).
Cruelty is now 2 ranks and grants 10% increased damage and a 15% chance to reset its own cooldown during enrage, per rank.
Frenzy now stacks up to 3 times (was 4).
Unbridled Ferocity now works correctly with Reckless Abandon.
Odyn’s Fury is now correctly improved by various damage modifiers.
Ravager cooldown is now correctly 90 seconds.
Gushing wound damage increased to 20% of attack power (was 10%).
Protection Developer Notes
We’ll be putting more focus on the Protection tree in the coming weeks, so for now there aren’t large changes in this week’s build.
We’re looking at doing a tuning pass for Protection in the future both in terms of survivability and DPS output.
Protection
Battle-Scared Veterans are no longer scared. They are now Battle-Scarred, as it should be!
Ravager cooldown is now correctly 90 seconds.
Increased damage of Shield Charge to 275% of attack power (was 200%) and increased the area of effect damage to 110% of attack power (was 50%).
Fixed another issue causing Seismic Reverberation to trigger many Revenge casts.
PET BATTLES
Added a questline that helps new players learn about the pet battle system.
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
WAR MODE
Pull out your swords and bows, champions, and turn War Mode on. In this week’s build you’ll be able to see world quests that you’ll only be able to find in war mode. On Alpha, the availability of them will rotate daily for testing purposes. Players can enable and disable War Mode by visiting Stormwind or Orgrimmar depending on their faction, and there are portals in the Seat of the Aspects in Valdrakken you can take to your respective faction’s capitol.
Additionally, within Valdrakken you may have spotted Malicia, a Drakonid part of the Black Dragonflight who enjoys chaos and conflict amongst those not in the Dragonflight. She offers valuable goods in exchange for Bloody Tokens, which you’ll only be able to find in War Mode. Keep an eye out in future builds on how to acquire Bloody Tokens.
PROFESSIONS
MINING
In this Alpha build, Mining has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Intrepid miners can now mine ore that can be found in the new Dragonflight zones, and also focus on how they want to grow as a Miner through specializations. A large addition to the Mining is the ability to Overload special ore nodes (such as Molten and Earthen nodes), which will cause a unique effect based on your rank in Specializations and the node itself. Overload only works on these special ore nodes, it does not do anything to normal ore. To access the Overload ability, you need unlock it via the Master the Elements specialization path.
Please pick up your pickaxe and mine some ore, and let us know how the Profession feels! We’re particularly interested in hearing about how ore node density feels in the zones, if there are areas that are too sparse or too generously spawned and overall thoughts on the new Overload mechanic.
SPECIALIZATIONS
Unlocking Specializations requires 25 skill in that Profession. Once unlocked, players can spend Specialization points to unlock various bonuses for their Profession.
Developers’ note: For the purposes of Alpha we’ve added a consumable, Professor Instructaur’s Top Secret Guide, on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor that gives players 50 Specialization points. Below are a few Specialization paths for Mining:
Mining
Mining Process – Study the understanding of proper mining techniques to increase your efficiency in mining and allow for new mining opportunities. Gain +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
Surveying – Improve your ability to find deposits and rare materials found within them. Gain +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
Mastering the Elements – As elemental chaos runs rampant across the Dragon Isles, experiences miners have discovered new techniques to tap into remnants of these magics found with these precious metals. Gain +1 Skill on all elemental nodes per point in this specialization.
Molten – Specializing in Molten Nodes will allow you to acquire additional Rousing Fire and improve your efficiency in mining these nodes. Gain +1 Skill on Molten Nodes per point in this specialization.
RECRAFTING
Recrafting has been enabled in this week’s build. Recrafting allows players to change out existing item’s Optional Reagents and potentially improve the quality of the crafted equipment. Crafters can learn the Recrafting Recipe from the Associate Professor Instructaur. Please play around with this system and let us know your thoughts!
KNOWN ISSUES
Factors that influence item Quality and optional reagents that add additional effects to a crafted item will not be properly represented in the final preview of the item. This affects the preview for the Crafting & Recrafting result, the item in the Crafting Complete log and when the item is linked in a chat channel. This is only a display issue on the item preview, the resulting item should still craft properly (let us know if it doesn’t!). This will be fixed in a future build.
Items that have a limited amounts crafts per day, such as Azureweave Bolt, cannot be crafted if the remaining Uses Available is below the max capacity.
USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY
NEW HUD UI
Edit Mode
Added Buffs & Debuffs
Added Party Frames
Class and Professions tracking added back to the Minimap tracking toggle.
Added new Campaign Quest cursor when hovering over an NPC offering a Campaign Quest.
NEW OPTION: PRESS AND HOLD CASTING
If enabled, allows the player to press and hold a keyboard hotkey to continually cast a spell on an Action Bar without having to repeatedly press the button.
This only supports keyboard hotkeys, clicking a spell with the mouse will still cast the spell a single time.
Will not work with macros and items.
Enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Interface > Combat
NEW FEATURE: INTERACT KEY
Press the Interact Key to interact with NPCs and objects with a keypress instead of your mouse.
Interactive NPCs and objects will highlight as you enter interact range. An icon will appear above NPCs.
The default Interact Key is F. If F is not working or is bound to something else, go to the Keybindings menu and make sure “Interact With Target” is bound to a key.
Enable this feature by typing “/console SoftTargetInteract 3” in chat. An interface option will be added later.
NEW TARGETING SYSTEM: ACTION COMBAT
Automatically targets enemies as you approach them, allowing you to start casting abilities immediately.
Dynamically switches targets based on where you’re looking.
Works alongside the standard targeting system. If you need to lock on to a target, simply press Tab to enter Tab Target Combat.
Enable this feature by typing “/console SoftTargetEnemy 3” in chat. An interface option will be added later.
In retail among the first hotfixes of this week Lower Karazhan will be getting multiple nerfs with the weekly reset in Mythic+! Additionally in an effort to get former WoW players who have not bought Shadowlands back into the game, they will receive a copy of Shadowlands for free.
Over on the Alpha side of things, Warlocks and Mages have received large blue posts detailing changes going live in the next Alpha build!
Our Eye of Kilrogg has been watching the community discussions unfold over the past two weeks and we have several changes that we’re summoning into this week’s Alpha update, based on the feedback we’ve observed. There’s a lot to cover with Core and each Specialization tree receiving significant changes, so grab your Healthstones and let’s dive into our grimoire of updates:
Core Tree
We took another look at the Core tree and came to the same consensus that a lot of the community shared: while it was cool to get access to buttons previously unavailable or completely new, it created a lot of button bloat and added some additional mechanical complexity to each rotation. In lieu of this, we’ve cut out a lot of the throughput centric talents (Devastating Bolt, each of the Pacts, etc.) and introduced (or re-introduced) some utility talents in their place. Here are some examples of spells you can expect to see:
Soul Armor – When your health drops below 35%, the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link is increased by an additional 5%.
Demonic Resilience – Reduces the chance you will be critically struck by 4%. All damage your primary demon takes is reduced by 15%.
Abyss Walker – Using Demonic Circle: Teleport or your Demonic Gateway reduces all damage you take by 4% for 10 sec.
Fel Synergy – Soul Leech also heals you for 25% and your pet for 50% of the absorption it grants.
Soul Link has been divided into two parts: Fel Synergy and itself (the damage reduction portion). The reason for this change is Soul Link offers too much value for a single talent node. That said, Fel Synergy and Soul Link are very close to one another, and neither are multi-rank.
Additionally, the following abilities are now implemented and testable:
Summon Soulkeeper (was Summon Jailer) – You gain Tormented Souls periodically and as you slay enemies. Consume all Tormented Souls to summon a Soulkeeper that periodically blasts nearby enemies. The Soulkeeper’s lasts 2 seconds per Tormented Soul consumed.
Inquisitor’s Gaze – Summons an Inquisitor’s Eye that periodically blasts your enemies.
We’ve also rearranged some talents, such as moving Accrued Vitality and making Demonic Circle much more accessible.
By removing excess throughput from the Core tree, we have more freedom to funnel it into the specialization trees and focus on amplifying each specialization’s rotation.
Affliction Tree
Our primary goals with this pass of Affliction are to remove a lot of the button bloat introduced during the first pass, remove excess rotational maintenance, and focus on Affliction’s single target toolkit. With these goals in mind, we’ve removed: Deathbolt, Death Dealer, Pact of the Nathrezim, and Malefic Wrath.
With space being a bit freed up, we have some new talents and changes that we’re excited to get feedback on:
Creeping Death no longer decreases the duration of your damage over time effects.
Malefic Affliction – Malefic Rapture causes your active Unstable Affliction to deal 5/10% additional damage, up to 15/30%, for the rest of its duration.
Doom Blossom (a choice against Dread Touch) – If Corruption damages a target affected by your Unstable Affliction, it has a 10% chance per stack of Malefic Affliction to deal Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
Dread Touch (a choice against Doom Blossom) – If Malefic Affliction exceeds 3 stacks, the target instead takes 20% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 6 seconds.
Soul-Eater’s Gluttony – Whenever Unstable Affliction deals damage, the cooldown of Soul Rot is reduced by 0.5/1.0 second.
Grim Reach (a choice against Wilfred’s Sigil of Superior Summoning) – When Darkglare deals damage, it deals 50% of that damage to all enemies affected by your damage over time effects.
We’ve also rearranged several talents on the left side of the tree. We will continue to watch for feedback and will be tuning as we continue to test.
Demonology Tree
Overall, we’re happy with the community’s reception of the Demonology tree but have some changes and iterations we’d like to make.
Demonic Consumption has been removed and replaced with Reign of Tyranny.
Reign of Tyranny – Active Wild Imps grant 1 stack of Demonic Servitude. Active greater demons grant 2 stacks of Demonic Servitude. Demonic Tyrant deals 3% additional damage for each stack of Demonic Servitude active at the time of his summon.
Demonic Consumption was largely invisible in terms of how much power your Tyrant was getting and encouraged utilizing defensive cooldowns offensively for maximum throughput. With Reign of Tyranny, we’re trying something that is more visible to players and with better, controllable scaling.
Guillotine (was Hold This For Me) is now playable and available for testing.
Your Felguard hurls his axe towards the target location, erupting when it lands and dealing Shadowflame damage every 1 second for 8 seconds to nearby enemies. While unarmed, your Felguard’s basic attacks deal damage to all nearby enemies and attacks 50% faster.
Ner’zhul’s Volition has been updated.
When Nether Portal summons a demon, it has a 2/4% chance per Soul Shard spent to summon an additional demon.
Destruction Tree
Like Demonology, we’re happy with how the Destruction tree has been received. We’ve implemented many tuning changes for Destruction, and a few changes to spells based on feedback:
Backdraft now affects Soul Fire.
Dimensional Rift is now in the Destruction tree as a choice against Chaos Incarnate.
Combusting Engine has been removed and replaced with Explosive Potential.
Explosive Potential – Reduces the cooldown of Conflagrate by 2 seconds.
Chaos Shards has been removed and replaced with Scalding Flames.
Scalding Flames – Increases the damage of Immolate by 13/25%.
We’re removing Chaos Shards to ensure that Destruction’s Soul Shard generation is at a healthy cadence rather than overflowing.
That’s it for now! Thank you for all the feedback and discussions. We’ll Demonic Circle: Teleport back here when we have further updates to share.
In this week’s Alpha update, there will be a number of updates to both the Core and Spec trees for the Mage Class. We’d like to talk a bit about our design directions for this iteration and the improvements we’re looking to make.
Core Tree
The Core tree is seeing the heaviest redesign. Our goal has been to increase options by adding new spells, reducing overall multi-point nodes, cutting all existing 3-point nodes, and improve pathing. Several choice nodes have been split into standalone nodes to increase utility options. We’ve also been looking to reduce the number of nodes that may feel required. Cone of Cold will be moving baseline to improve the base kit and remove dependency issues.
Here are some examples of spells you can expect to see:
Reflection – Teleports you back to where you last Blinked. Only usable within 8 seconds of Blinking, 45 second cooldown.
Volatile Detonation – Greatly increases the effect of Blast Wave’s knockback. Blast Wave’s cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds.
Time Manipulation – Casting Fire Blast/Ice Lance on Frozen targets/Arcane Missiles reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 1/2 seconds.
Energized Barriers – When your barrier receives melee attacks, you have a 10% chance to be granted 1 Fire Blast/1 Fingers of Frost/1 Clearcasting charge. Casting your barrier removes all snare effects.
Some of this work is ongoing, and you can expect to see a couple of nodes marked NYI (Not Yet Implemented) for now.
Fire Tree
We felt the pathing in this tree has not allowed for enough exploration due to nodes that feel required. We’re looking to reduce the number of “mandatory” points by moving a few spells baseline, such as Hot Streak and Fire Blast Rank 2, and providing more options below gate 1 and 2. Phoenix Flames will also be moving up to above gate 1.
Frost Tree
A good amount of feedback for this tree has been related to the Icy Veins nodes and how required they feel, which is leading to little choice in the bottom third of the tree. We’re looking to allow for backtracking and additional choice. To help accomplish this, we’re making all 3 point nodes into 2 point nodes and reducing the point count of the Icy Veins related nodes below gate 2. Additionally, Winter’s Chill functionality will now be baseline when Flurry is learned to allow for more point flexibility.
Arcane Tree
The Arcane tree has been updated and will have quite a bit of re-organization of talents to better open up options as you navigate through the tree as well as make a few talents that felt previously inaccessible a little easier to access. Cooldowns on some abilities have also been adjusted to better flow with Arcane’s 45/90-second windows. Below is a highlight of some of the changes you can expect in the next alpha build.
Arcane Bombardment – Reduced to max 1 rank, down from 2.
Arcane Echo – Reduced to max 1 rank, down from 2.
Arcane Surge – Now grants a burst of mana on cast so that the player can immediately start casting Arcane Blast
Arcane Orb – Moved up the tree. It’s now available before the first gate and directly after Arcane Missiles.
Rules of Threes – Now a choice node with Arcane Familiar. This choice node has swapped places with Arcane Tempo
Evocation – Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds, down from 120 seconds.
Improved Evocation – Cut
Siphon Storm – Converted to a single node (was previously a choice node with Improved Evocation).
Charged Orb – Now available after unlocking the first gate (Charged Orb grants Arcane Orb 1 additional Charge).
Orb Barrage – Converted to a single node (was previously a choice node with Orb Barrage).
Now also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Orb by 2 seconds when Clearcasting is consumed.
Nether Tempest – Position on the tree has moved toward the center of the talent tree as a choice node with Reverberate connecting from Mana Adept and Improved Arcane Barrage.
Conjure Mana Gem – Now restores 25% Mana, up from 10% Mana.
Now grants 5% increased spell power for 10 seconds baseline.
Cascading Power – Now grants up to 2 stacks of Clearcasting when consuming a Mana Gem (previously granted Spell Power).
Enlightened – Moved lower into the tree (from Row 6 to Row 8).
Resonance – Moved to Enlightened’s previous position.
Presence of Mind – Cooldown reduced to 45 seconds, down from 60 seconds.
Thank you for all of your testing and feedback so far. We’ll address some of the remaining tweaks and NYI spots in a future build soon after the next.
Don’t own Shadowlands yet? The afterlife awaits you, hero! From now until September 5, 2022, you can claim your FREE copy of the Shadowlands Base Edition, along with a Level 50 Character Boost through the Battle.net Desktop App. Play the complete Shadowlands experience and get an early start preparing for the launch of Dragonflight later in 2022.
Eligibility
All Battle.net accounts that do not currently have the Shadowlands expansion attached and that had any expansion license attached to the account in the past will receive the Shadowlands Base Edition and a Level 50 Character Boost FREE (no purchase necessary).
Battle.net accounts without a previous expansion license attached on any of their WoW game accounts, or which already have Shadowlands on any of their game accounts, are NOT eligible to receive a free copy of Shadowlands.
How do I Claim My Gift?
To claim your gift, follow these steps:
Open the Battle.net Desktop App and log in.
If you don’t have the App installed, download it here.
Click the gift icon* on the top right side of the app, next to the notification bell icon.
In the confirmation window, look for your gifts and click the CLAIM button.
Launch World of Warcraft® and enjoy your FREE copy of the Shadowlands Base Edition and Level 50 Character Boost.
We hope you enjoy these gifts, and may your journey through the afterlives be filled with adventure and excitement. Keep an eye on https://worldofwarcraft.com/news for all the latest on World of Warcraft, Shadowlands, and beyond, including the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic on September 26 and Dragonflight later in 2022. See you in Azeroth!
We got quite a bit of info on Dragonflight developments last night. Steve Danuser has confirmed that there will be indeed a 3 year timeskip after Shadowlands and we got multiple blue posts on different class feedback threads about changes coming to their respective talent trees!
I wanted to take a moment to address the topic of time passage between Shadowlands and Dragonflight.
There has always been some amount of time passing between expansions, though rarely has it been called out in game. We maintain an internal timeline of what year each expansion begins, and the gap between them has either been one year (as with earlier expansions) or two years (as with most of the later ones). But NPCs in the world don’t talk about how the Burning Crusade took place in the year 26 after the Dark Portal opened, or how we rediscovered Pandaria in the year 30.
When you look back at the Warcraft timeline, one of the things you’ll notice is that a lot of massive, world-changing events were tightly clustered together. This is especially true for WoW, which since launch has seen a multitude of invasions and catastrophes back-to-back in the chronology.
With Shadowlands representing the closing of one book in the Warcraft saga (as we mentioned in interviews around the release of our Eternity’s End update), it felt like an opportunity to give Azeroth and its inhabitants a bit of breathing room before Dragonflight ushers in the start of our next major storyline.
Shadowlands began in the year 35 after the opening of the Dark Portal, and Dragonflight will begin in the year 40.
Given that the events of Shadowlands took place over the course of two years, that leaves a few additional years that we are fast-forwarding through. Our purpose here is not to have a litany of events take place outside the game that you need to read about in a novel or other media to understand the state of the world. The goal of the fast-forward is to provide the people of Azeroth with a slice of “normal” life without a major threat looming over their heads.
When our heroes return from the Realms of Death, you can imagine them easing back into their lives and duties without an immediate crisis to address or enemy to fight. With the Alliance and Horde honoring the truce signed after the Fourth War, the average Azerothian citizen will be able to enjoy a time of stability and reflection.
That said, we plan to offer a digital short story on our website that details one particularly joyous occasion which has been referenced in the alpha build. It’s going to be a fun and charming read, but it won’t be necessary in order to understand the events of Dragonflight.
Besides stretching out the WoW timeline a bit, another benefit of this fast-forward is that it will let our younger characters get a little older, allowing some of them to take a larger role in future storylines. Yet not so much time will be passing that you’d expect characters who are already adults to look significantly different.
As for changes to the world that have been discussed or foreshadowed, such as the resettlement of Gilneas, those will not be happening during the fast-forward. As cool as it is to show locations and populations evolving because of story progression, we want events of this importance to be in-game questing that our players experience for themselves (as with the reclaiming of the Ruins of Lordaeron in the 9.2.5 update) rather than having it happen off-camera.
For your player characters, it has always been left to your own interpretation how much time had passed when they log in after the arrival of a major update or new expansion. Dragonflight is no exception. You are free to imagine what your characters have been doing in that time of respite as you look forward to the arrival of the Dragonflight pre-patch.
Hopefully this post helps clear up confusion about the timeline and explains our goals for having a few more years pass than we normally would.
Several changes are coming in the next build you receive, in addition to several bug fixes. We also removed a -35% damage and healing modifier to your spells that benefit from Maelstrom Weapon in an effort to make your spells more impactful, but may have to reintroduce this as tuning goes on.
Talent Changes:
Primal Primer is no longer an option in the tree.
Primal Primer and Primal Lava Actuators were two different ways of making Lava Lash better. We opted to keep Primal Lava Actuators.
Hailstorm now provides your next Frost Shock a bonus for up to 10 Maelstrom Weapon charges spent to better work with Overflowing Maelstrom. The maximum bonus targets is still limited to 5.
Stormstrike now replaces Primal Strike.
Doom Winds now does some immediate damage when you activate the ability.
Ice Strike’s Frost Shock buff now highlights Frost Shock.
Alpha Wolf now works with Chain Lightning, rather than Crash Lightning so you do not have to take Crash Lightning to get the benefit.
Ascendance now is now a choice node vs Deeply Rooted Elements.
Thorim’s Invocation now remembers whether you most recently cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning, and uses that spell when you use Windstrike, rather than always using Lightning Bolt.
Several changes will be in your next build and we wanted to share what to expect. There are also several bug fixes, and some things that were previously marked NYI are now working.
Class Tree:
Survival Hunters: corrected a missing connection between Kill Command and Improved Mend Pet on the class tree.
Alpha Predator’s value has been lowered from 30%, to 15%.
Improved Traps now also lowers the cooldown of Hi-Explosive Trap.
Stampede now snares targets hit by 30%, and you and your pets gain 10% increased critical strike chance against targets hit by your Stampede.
Hunter’s Agility is once again Avoidance.
Camouflage no longer links directly to Improved Traps. The choice node below Survival of the Fittest now links to Born to be Wild.
New 2-point passive talent, Serrated Shots: Serpent Sting and your bleed damage is increased by 10/20% damage. This value increases to 20/40% against targets below 30% HP.
New 2-point passive talent: Arctic Bola – Aimed Shot/Cobra Shot/Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite have a chance to fling a bola out at your target that bounces 2/4 times and deals increased damage per point. Targets struck by the bola are snared by 20% for 3 sec.
Beast Mastery:
The top of the Beast Mastery tree has been shuffled around a bit, and now starts with Cobra Shot rather than Barbed Shot.
Barbed Shot damage has been increased by ~75% (this is unrelated to talents and just a change to the ability)
Loaded Quiver has been removed. Barbed Shot is now 2 charges always.
Barbed Wrath is now 1 point, down from 2. It no longer affects Aspect of the Wild.
Wild Call has been reduced to 1 rank.
Call of the Wild’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes.
The Bloody Frenzy that adjusted Barbed Shot Frenzy stack generation has been removed.
New 1-point talent: Brutal Companion. When Barbed Shot causes a 3rd stack of Frenzy, your pet automatically uses their special attack (Bite/Claw/Smack) with increased damage.
Aspect of the Wild has been redesigned.
Aspect of the Wild now fires a Cobra Shot at your target and another nearby target. While Aspect of the Wild is active, Cobra Shot’s Focus cost is reduced by 10, and each Cobra Shot fires a Second Cobra Shot at a nearby target.
New choice node below Aspect of the Wild:
Each temporary beast summoned reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 5 sec.
Cobra Shot damage increased by 30% while Aspect of the Wild is active.
Several talents shifted around past the first gate due to the above changes, but the tree’s structure is very similar.
Marksmanship:
Dead Eye now also reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot.
Windrunner’s Guidance has been lowered to 25% critical strike damage bonus.
New choice node below Wailing Arrow:
Wailing Arrow resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire and grants a charge of Aimed Shot.
Wailing Arrow now fires 5 wind arrows at your primary target, and up to 10 split between any secondary targets.
Crack Shot lowered to a 1-point talent.
Calling the Shots and Eagletalon’s True Focus have swapped spots.
Survival
Coordinated Assault, Spearhead, and related talents should be working.
Explosive Expert tooltip updated, it has no interaction with Kill Shot and is just some cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs.
Birds of Prey has been redesigned. Kill Shot now strikes up to 3 extra targets while Coordinated Assault is active.
New choice node against Birds of Prey: Bombardier. The cooldown of Wildfire Bombs is reset when Coordinated Assault is activated, and when it fades.
Guerilla Tactics increases the initial damage of Wildfire Bombs by 50%, down from 100%.
Fury of the Eagle once again grants 50% critical strike chance against targets below 20% HP.
Ruthless Marauder increases the HP threshold for increases critical strikes by 5% per rank rather than increasing critical strike chance.
Thanks for the continued feedback and testing.
And yes, have a nice weekend everyone!
We’ve got an info drop for you. Here’s what we’ve been working on, and what you can expect to see in the next Alpha build for both the Class and Unholy trees.
Class Talents
In an effort to further increase choice, we’ve updated some talent positions, added two additional connections from Might of Thassarian and Merciless Strikes toward the center section of the class tree, reduced 3 rank talents to 2, and updated the lead-in talent to Abomination Limb with a throughput talent.
The following changes are not everything you’re going to see in the next build. Rather, these are highlights of the bigger changes (and a few more-subtle position changes with existing talent nodes).
Rune Mastery
Max ranks increased to 2, up from 1.
Now leads into Abomination Limb (replacing Improved Death Strike).
Icy Talons
Max ranks reduced to 2, down from 3.
Unholy Bond
Max ranks reduced to 2, down from 3.
Unholy Endurance
New talent: Increases Lichborne duration by 2 sec and while active damage taken is reduced by 15%.
Death Pact
Now has a new connection from Might of Thassarian
Asphyxiate
Now has a new connection from Merciless Strikes.
Clenching Grasp
New talent: Death Grip slows enemy movement speed by 50% for 6 sec.
Improved Death Strike
Max ranks reduced to 1, down from 3.
Now available much earlier in the tree.
Here is a look at the updated tree with the new structure:
Unholy
As we mentioned previously, we have updates to both the baseline and talent tree for Unholy. These will be available in the next Alpha update. The baseline changes focus on helping reduce the cooldown desync as well as baking in existing talents to help the flow and feel of the spec. Additionally, the Unholy tree itself experienced substantial iteration and has been mostly redesigned and restructured with 11 new talents.
Below is a list of changes previously mentioned, as well as new talents. The below list does not document each individual restructuring of existing talents, as that’s quite substantial, but we do have a screenshot of the tree below to help contextualize what can be expected.
Abilities
Death Coil
Runic Power cost reduced to 30, down from 40.
Epidemic
Damage increased by 20%
Scourge Strike/Clawing Shadows
Damage increased 20%
Talents
General
All 3 max rank talents have been reduced to max 2 rank (where applicable)
Deadly Coil
Cut
Unholy Command
No longer reduces the CD of Dark Transformation when dealing damage with Death Coil
Now reduces the cooldown of Dark Transformation by 8/15 seconds.
Army of the Damned
Now reduces the cooldown of Apocalypse by 45 seconds (No longer reduced by Death Coil)
Death Coil still reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead
No longer summons a Magus of the Dead when Apocalypse or Army of the Dead are cast
Summon Gargoyle
Duration reduced to 30s, down from 35s
Now gains 1% damage per 1 runic power spent (down from 1% per 2 runic power)
At first read this can be confusing but it is a buff to the damage ramp for Gargoyle.
Improved Scourge Strike – Increases the damage of Scourge Strike by 10/20%
Cut
New Talent – Feasting Strikes: Festering Strike and Scourge Strike/Clawing Shadows have 15% chance to generate 1 Rune.
New Talent – Runic Mastery: Increases Maximum Runic Power by 10/20.
New Talent – Plaguebringer: Scourge Strike causes your disease damage to occur 150% more quickly for 5 sec.
New Talent – Magus of the Dead: Apocalypse and Army of the Dead also summon a Magus of the Dead who hurls Frostbolts and Shadow Bolts at your foes.
Magus of the Dead’s Shadow Bolt damage increased by 20%.
Magus of the Dead’s Frostbolt damage increased by 10%
Magus of the Dead’s Frostbolt slow duration increased to 6 sec and 60% slow (up from 4 seconds and 50%)
New Talent – Ruptured Viscera: When your ghouls expire, they explode in viscera dealing Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
New Talent – Commander of the Dead: Dark Transformation also empowers your Gargoyle and Army of the Dead for 30 seconds, increasing their damage by 40%.
New Talent – Eternal Agony: Death Coil increases the duration of Dark Transformation by 1 sec.
New Talent – Coil of Devastation: Death Coil causes the target to take an additional 35% of the direct damage dealt over 4 sec.
New Talent – Rotten Touch: Sudden Doom causes your next Death Coil to also increase your Scourge Strike damage against the target by 30% for 6 sec.
[NYI] New Talent – Plaguebearer: Inflict disease upon your enemies spreading Festering Wounds equal to the amount currently active on your target to 8 nearby enemies (45s cooldown, 30 Runic Power).
This ability may not make it into the next Alpha build.
New Talent – Superstrain: Your Virulent Plague also applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague.
Currently grants full effectiveness for the other diseases. Tuning is always likely to change in future builds.
Please note: Morbidity will now also scale damage from FF and BP because of this the damage per rank has been reduced.
The new and updated Unholy tree looks like this:
Thank you very much for all of your discussion and feedback.
We look forward to hearing more from you about the updated trees.
The Dragonflight Alpha has been updated for phase 6 testing! All leveling zones are now enabled, monks have had their talent trees added, the reputation/renown faction tracks are now testable and much more!
On the retail side of things we had two small hotfixes.
Hello everyone! Take a look at this week’s Dragonflight Alpha updates:
DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES
All Dragonflight zones are available
NEW FEATURES
FOUR MAJOR FACTIONS
Major Factions are a new way of experiencing outdoor progression – an iteration on previous reputation-based gameplay. Participating in content throughout the Dragon Isles grants reputation toward these Major Factions. Earning reputation unlocks renown ranks. Each Major Faction’s progression is different, with content fitting a variety of playstyles. Importantly, major factions are not exclusive – you can be a member of all four factions at once.
VALDRAKKEN ACCORD – The faction of the unified dragon flights working together in harmony for the protection of the Dragon Isles.
Professions: A variety of activities, Work Orders, and exploration catered towards professions and progression within the system.
Dragon Racing: Complete races on your dragon for glory and renown
Lay siege to the Djaradin of Dragonbane Keep within the Waking Shores
DRAGONSCALE EXPEDITION – The Explorers’ League and Reliquary have come together and formed this expedition to explore the Dragon Isles.
Discover treasure maps scattered throughout the Dragon Isles
Lots of Treasures, unique minigame-style World Quests (Climbing, Cataloging)
Progression
Expedition Supply Kit: Unlock bonuses for climbing and cataloging. Unlock tools to help find treasure and mark your discovery of areas in the world.
ISKAARA TUSKARR – Become a member of the Iskaara Tuskarr, a tribe renowned for their skills in fishing and feasting.
Fishing: New ways to fish. Unlock fishing holes. Fish in 3 difficult and unique biomes. Fish up lunkers with friends using harpoons. Collect fish offline with a net.
Contribute to a Tuskarr Feast at the village in Iskaara. Complete the event to reward hungry adventurers!
Outdoor Elite locations: Imbu, Brackenhide Hollow
Progression
Fishing Work Bench: Gather reagents for tuskarr craftsmen to improve the capability of harpoons, nets, and biome fishing.
MARUUK CENTAUR – The faction for the unified centaur clans across the Ohn’ahran Plains.
Join a hunt among the Maruuk centaur and your closest allies as you traverse the zones within the Dragon Isles
Explore the nomadic lifestyle of Clan Aylaag as their caravan makes its way across the Ohn’ahran Plains. With each stop comes a new adventure, quests, rewards, and more!
Progression
Train with the Shikaar clan to prepare yourself for the hunt!
Known Issues
You will most likely encounter placeholder rewards, especially for treasures and rare creatures.
Not every permutation of every type of content is available yet.
Some areas of the world may have temporary enemy population.
Developers’ note: We appreciate any and all feedback. For this release, we’ve reduced some of our barriers to entry for a number of pieces of content. We’d love to hear how these experiences feel and how you spend your time in the Dragon Isles. Alpha is an environment for testing and change. Though some of these barriers and values may be temporary, we will be monitoring feedback and making adjustments as needed to ensure your experience in these new lands is enjoyable and rewarding. Please let us know your thoughts. We’ll be adjusting content throughout the days and weeks to come.
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.
The Nokhud Offensive
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.
Any Level Character Template
Maximum Level: 70
CLASSES
NEW TALENT SYSTEM
HUNTER
Class Tree
Improved Traps now also reduces cooldown of Steel Trap.
Removed connection between Rejuvenating Winds and Improved Tranquilizing Shot.
Added a connection between Tranquilizing Shot and the Intimidation/Explosive Trap choice node.
Lone Survivor’s cooldown reduction has been lowered 30 seconds (was 60 seconds).
Death Chakram now increases all damage taken instead of just physical damage taken.
Marksmanship
The talent locations of Lone Wolf and Killing Blow have been swapped.
The talent locations of Black Arrow and Legacy of the Windrunners have been swapped.
Legacy of the Windrunners changed from 1 rank to 2 ranks. Each rank adds 3 potential arrows. Bonuses to Aimed Shot now also apply to these bonus Wind Arrows.
Windrunner’s Guidance changed from 2 ranks to 1 rank. It now also guarantees a critical strike for the Wind Arrows, and increases their critical strike damage up by 50%.
Salvo now works with Volley or Multi-Shot.
Bombardment changed to a 1 rank talent and is now right below Multi-Shot.
New Talent: Bulletstorm – Extra ricochet targets from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to Multi-Shot damage.
Calling the Shots has had its design adjusted to grant cooldown reduction for Trueshot from Focus Spent, rather than require specific shots.
Improved Arcane Shot has been to renamed Crack Shot.
MONK
Developers’ note: In today’s build, you’ll see an early-access version of the Monk talent trees. Our goal with the class tree is to allow a player to construct different visions of their character and play with the hybrid nature and cheerful mobility that exemplifies a Monk. For Brewmaster, our primary goal was to allow players the flexibility to lean into different flavors – to emphasize a brew-heavy playstyle, or go the way of the wily martial arts master – while also providing situationally-interesting decisions for survivability. For Mistweaver, we want to offer support for both the caster and melee playstyles while maintaining a variety of choices for both builds. We also wanted to take a look at Mistweaver’s multi-target damage profile through returning and new talents such as Zen Pulse and Ancient Concordance. And for Windwalkers, we wanted to allow players the flexibility to focus on different styles of damage dealing, as well as offering opportunities to customize their ability loadout in ways that bring back old friends or lean into focus on specific abilities. We’re excited for Monks to be joining the Dragonflight Alpha and we look forward to hearing your feedback!
Known Issues
There are several talents that are not fully implemented yet. These are tagged with NYI (Not Yet Implemented) in their Talent name.
The Talent Frame background for Mistweaver is incorrectly using Windwalker art. This will be corrected in a later build.
PALADIN
Retribution
Divine Protection has been added as a choice node with Shield of Vengeance. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
Justicar’s Vengeance now costs 3 Holy Power and deals 7% less damage.
The talent locations of Ashes to Ashes and Divine Toll have been swapped.
WARLOCK
Soul Conduit refund chance reduced to 10% at max rank (was 15%).
Destruction
Backdraft now affects Soul Fire.
WARRIOR
Class Developer Notes
We’re feeling pretty satisfied with the class tree structure but are still experimenting with placements and the content of specific talent nodes while taking onboard internal and community feedback.
We’ve seen a new iteration of the class tree each week during the three weeks since the first release of the Warrior tree. In the version going live today there’s the most options due to more pathways and interconnectivity. We’d love to hear from you if you prefer this, or the more streamlined simple tree with obvious pathways that released initially.
We want to spend a little more time with stances to try to achieve a version where each feel useful and desirable for different reasons, but we have had a fallback plan since embarking down this path of having an offensive and defensive stance. Fury and Arms would both start at the offensive node and Protection would start at the Defensive node.
Thunderous Roar – We are working on this and the subsequent talent node, which will be a choice node internally and we hope to update on this soon.
Signet of Tormented Kings – As above, we’re working internally on this, and we hope to have an update soon. We have ideas but haven’t implemented them yet.
Shockwave – There has been some feedback about wanting Shockwave to be lower down the tree and easier to obtain. We’re quite confident that if we put it before the 20 points requirement that every Warrior both DPS and Protection would have it. That isn’t our intention, an AOE stun on fairly short cooldown is a powerful ability and we feel there needs to be some opportunity cost to obtain this. We’d like Shockwave’s subsequent node to be a choice so expect a new modifier here in the future.
Rend – Our intention with the introduction of Rend to the class talent tree was that Arms and Protection would likely often choose it and that Fury would very rarely. We’ve seen higher uptake and reliance on Rend than we’d like so for this week we’ve moved it to the Arms and Protection trees as a test. We’d like to hear your feedback on this change.
There are several very simple nodes on various talent trees, including those of other classes. These serve multiple functions, and we’ll briefly detail some of the reasoning behind their existence.
When looking at the talent trees for a class there’s a huge amount of information to absorb and learn. Beyond that, there’s also many choices for players to make. Having some talents that are simple and obvious in their effect helps to lower the overall complexity and functions as a guide for what abilities and stats are important for each specialization.
However, we’ve heard your feedback about the secondary stat nodes and have been working to make them more interesting. There are some examples of this in the Fury tree this week.
Class Updates
Changed some pathing and node positions to encourage more flexible build choices.
Spear of Bastion – Should now work correctly outside of the Shadowlands.
Elysian Might – Should now work correctly outside of the Shadowlands.
Honed Reflexes – Now reduces cooldowns by 1.0 second (was 1.5 seconds) and reduces the cooldown of Raging Blow (was Bloodthirst).
New Talent: Menace – Intimidating Shout will knock back all nearby enemies except your primary target and cause them all to cower in fear for 15 seconds (was flee).
Crushing Force has been redesigned – Slam deals an additional 30% damage and it has a 10% increased critical strike chance.
Concussive Blows – Now reduces the cooldown of Pummel by 1.0 second (was 1.5 seconds).
Titanic Throw – Correctly applies deep wounds to all targets when combined with Improved Heroic Throw.
Impending Victory – Heals for 30% (was 40%).
Thunder Clap – Costs 30 Rage for Arms or Fury (still costs 0 Rage for Protection).
Rend – Removed from the class tree.
Arms Developer Notes
We’re feeling confident in the general structure, but we will likely add some extra talents to the middle of the tree where it feels a little bit sparse.
Sharpened Blade and Blunt Instruments – As with the simple talents mentioned earlier in this update, having some guidance from talents rather than everything being wide open can be helpful for some of our less knowledgeable players. We’re aware of the polarizing feedback here, but we want to get this in front of more players throughout the Alpha and Beta before we decide if it needs to be removed. If it doesn’t work out as we hope, we’re happy to change it.
We’re looking at changing the Bladestorm subsequent talents into choice nodes to give some more options for players to experiment with.
Colossus Smash and Warbreaker – We’ve seen some feedback regarding why these are separate talents and require an investment of two talent points. 30% increased damage with the option to apply to multiple targets on a fairly short cooldown is a massive effect. It is worth far more than the average talent, especially for those located before the level 20 gate and we feel it is fair to be split into separate components as it currently is in the live game.
There are quite a lot of survivability options and improvements for Warriors in the class tree, but each DPS spec has historically had a major cooldown. For Arms it is Die by the Sword, so you are now purposely forced into pathing through it and one of its subsequent nodes in order to ensure you have a minimum of some survivability.
Arms Updates
Changed some pathing and the position of some nodes so that players are much more likely to take some healing/utility nodes.
Warbreaker – No longer incorrectly replaces Execute and does not require 20 talent points to unlock.
Storm of Swords – No longer incorrectly requires 20 talent points to unlock.
Fracture – Now causes Rend, Deep Wounds and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects to instantly expire and deal all remaining damage over time.
Skullsplitter – Cooldown increased to 30 seconds (was 21 seconds).
Bloodletting – Also increases the critical strike chance of bleed effects by 10%.
Die by the Sword – Should now correctly cost a talent point.
Bloodborne – Now 2 ranks and each rank increases the damage of Deep Wounds, Rend and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects by 10%.
Barbaric Training – Removed from the talent tree.
Skull Banner – Should now correctly cost a talent point.
Deadly Calm – Removed from the tree for now, iterating on a better version that will be more desired by players.
Fueled by Violence – Increased heal amount to 50% (was 30%).
Reaping Swings – Lowers the cooldown of Cleave by 3 seconds (was 2 seconds).
New Talent: Storm Wall – Whenever you Parry, you heal for 10% of your maximum health.
Rend – Added to the Arms tree.
Exploit the Weakness now increases Tacticians’ chance to trigger by 1.6% (was 2.6%).
Fury Developer Notes
We’re doing something fairly experimental with Single-Minded Fury. We’re unsure if it will work out as intended, but we feel it there’s an important issue to try and address here. For a good deal of time there has been a consistent complaint that some players cannot continue to play Fury due to the intense nature of it. Our goal with Annihilator and the related talents is to create a sub spec that would provide a lower APM build that would still allow players to have fun, be competitive and feel like a Fury Warrior.
We’ve made Titan’s Grip baseline for various reasons, but primarily because it makes many things much simpler. It will be something players gain as they level up.
As with the Arms tree, you are now forced to take Enraged Regeneration to ensure you have a minimum amount of survivability. A dead Warrior deals no DPS.
Annihilator is intended to work with most of the Raging Blow modifiers (except those related to cooldown and charges), it is currently working with some, and we hope to have this fully functioning and detailed in tooltips by the next Alpha build.
We’re working on the subsequent nodes for Odyn’s Fury and Ravager, these will be choice nodes and we’ll have more to share here in the future.
Fury Updates
Rearranged various talents and created new pathways and choices.
Titan’s Grip – Now baseline for all Fury Warriors.
Hack and Slash – No longer incorrectly requires 20 talent points.
Onslaught – Removed the Enrage requirement to use, cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (was 16 seconds) and Rage generated reduced to 20 (was 25).
Pulverize – Now increases Enrage by 1 second and causes Onslaught to Enrage you.
Odyn’s Fury – Now generates 20 Rage temporarily. We plan for this this to generate Rage based on the targets hit in a future update.
Crushing Blow – Removed the auto charge component.
Swift Strikes – Now also causes Raging Blow and Annihilator to generate 1 additional Rage per rank.
Critical Thinking – Now also increases the critical strike damage of Raging Blow by 5% per rank.
Depths of Insanity – Ranks reduced from 2 to 1 and changed to, Recklessness lasts 5 seconds longer.
Ravager – Cooldown increased to 90.0 seconds (was 45.0 seconds) but damage increased to 84% (was 42%) and now correctly awards 10 Rage when dealing damage.
Siegebreaker – Duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds), now generates 15 Rage (was 10) and damage increased to 120% (was 110%).
Deafening Crash – Now also increases the critical strike chance of Raging Blow and Annihilator during Siegebreaker by 10%.
Slaughtering Strikes – Now correctly costs a talent point and correctly improves all Rampage Strikes when caused by both Raging Blow and Annihilator.
Slaughtering Strikes damage bonus reduced to 8% per strike (was 10%).
Frenzied Flurry – Reduced to 25% (was 50%) chance to trigger Enrage per rank and auto attack damage bonus reduced to 5% per rank (was 10%).
Annihilator – Correctly no longer works with the chain effect of Whirlwind.
Raging Armaments – Now correctly costs a talent point.
Skull Banner – Now correctly costs a talent point.
Vicious Contempt – Now 2 ranks at 20% per rank.
Storm of Swords – Whirlwind and Slam have a 6.0 seconds cooldown but deal 100% increased damage and Slam generates 5 Rage.
Annihilator – Damage reduced by 15%.
Unbridled Ferocity – Now correctly cost a talent point.
Deft Experience – Partial implementation and not labeled on the tooltip is that each node is intended to also reduce the cooldown of Bloodthirst by 0.5 seconds.
Protection Developer Notes
Shield Charge – The intention for this ability is that it would be used to charge into packs in dungeons or raids as an opener. Shield Charge isn’t competitive enough currently and we’ll be looking into this. We are toying with the idea of no minimum range so that it can be used at any time and would function more as a shield smash when you’re within a certain distance.
There are some technical complications with Devastator and Devastate that stopped us from merging them as a node for this week, we are likely to either make them a choice node or have Devastate be baseline.
We’re working on subsequent nodes for Ravager and hope to have updates here soon.
Battle Scared Veteran – We want this to remain powerful so in terms of changes we’re hopefully going to be able to balance this ability around the lockout period. Protection Warriors are performing well in the game currently but more so than some other tanks there’s a low margin for error. Battle Scared Veteran is intended to be a fall back in case you make a mistake.
Protection
Moved the position of a few nodes around to create some different options and added some new pathways.
Improved Heroic Throw – Now also increases the damage of Heroic Throw and Titanic throw by 100%.
Bloodborne – Now 2 ranks and each rank increases the damage of Deep Wounds, Rend and Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effects by 15%.
Spiked Shield – Damage increased by 10%.
Rend – Added to the Protection tree.
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
RATED ARENA SOLO QUEUE
Observant Alpha testers will notice that there is now a Solo Rated PvP option in the Player vs. Player UI. Players will not be able to queue for this mode yet as its still being worked on, but we will have more information to share in a later build.
PROFESSIONS
USER INTERFACE
Art and animations added for the Professions Specialization frame.
USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY
NEW HUD UI
Edit Mode
Added Extra Action Ability
Tracking drop down list added back to the minimap area.
Developer Note: Class based and professions tracking will rejoin the list soon.
Player interactions with NPC and game objects that open UI windows has received an update, changing the way these interactions are handled on the back end.
Developers’ note: There is no player facing design change, but we’d like alpha testers to help report bugs if there are any issues with UI dialogues from NPC and game objects.
Patch 9.2.7 has launched on both NA and EU realms and although Blizzard had to close the AH due to a bug they are now opening it again. They’ve released the first hotfixes that include visual improvements in Grimrail Depot and the removal of the Conquest Cap.
The Auction House wasn’t the only thing causing Blizzard trouble though, as they’ve had to extend the maintenance for the next Alpha build by a whole day because of issues they have had to get the next Alpha build launched!
After a lull in hotfixes we have a few fixes and improvements on the Shrouded M+ affix. Blizzard also announced that with the release of patch 9.2.7, which brings region wide auction houses for commodities, all auctions will be delisted.
On the Alpha side of things the devs responded to a couple of Paladin concerns and posted a total of 5 posts detailing changes and responding to feedback from Hunters! Check it all out below:
To prepare for the upcoming region-wide commodities Auction House update, all auctions that are still listed when next week’s maintenance begins will be cancelled and returned to players’ mailboxes. There will be a notice that appears in the Auction House 48 hours before the maintenance begins informing players of the update, so be sure to set your listings to end before the servers go down.
While this ability is relatively new to WoW as a whole, it does exist as a thing Paladin are familiar with, changing its name for the sake of change likely causes more confusion than a slightly off-themed ability does. Also, Shadowlands and its story doesn’t stop existing after Dragonflight launches.
This is a topic of discussion, but nothing final to announce either way.
Bringing back a way to get some quick Holy Light casts off is something we are discussing, whether through Infusion of Light changes, or some other method.
This won’t be a specific list of everything that has changed, but some notes on changes coming to the next build.
Class Tree:
Some minor changes have been made to some node connections.
Lone Survivor’s cooldown reduction has been lowered from 60 to 30 seconds.
Death Chakram should work in non-Shadowlands zones, and should increase all damage taken rather than just Physical damage taken
Master Marksman should work with melee abilities as well.
Marksmanship
Lots of bug fixes.
Legacy of the Windrunners has changed into a 2-point node again, each point will add 3 wind arrows. Also any buffs to Aimed Shot now applies to these Wind Arrows.
To clarify the point about Legacy of the Windrunners gaining bonuses from Aimed Shot, this is any buffs to crit chance or damage to Aimed Shot. Trick Shots will not be sending Wind Arrows all over the place.
New talent in the bottom left area: Bulletstorm. Extra targets your Aimed Shot or Rapid Fires ricochet to from Trick Shots grants a stacking buff to your Multi-Shot damage.
Bombardment has changed to a 1 point node and is located right below Multi-Shot
There has been some discussion about how Bombardment should work, or perhaps that it should just work like the current 4-piece set bonus with alternate numbers. Tracking resources spent is difficult in the default UI, and most people feel it is necessary to get an addon to track how much more Focus they have to spend to get a Trick Shots effect.
With the current design of X Arcane/Chimaera shots required as opposed to Focus Spent, why require a Multi-Shot instead of just granting Trick Shots? Most of the purpose of this talent is to provide some limited options for Trick Shots when you don’t have 3+ targets to consistently gain Trick Shots. If the fight has one target most of the time, and occasionally some adds spawn, getting a buff that guarantees your next Multi-Shot to grant you a Trick Shots regardless of targets hit should grant you increased control over when you want to use the effect. The Bombardment buff currently lasts 2 minutes, so there is no rush to try to jam in some extra shots right as some adds spawn, you have time to prepare and use this.
Calling the Shots has had its design adjusted to grant cooldown reduction for Trueshot from Focus Spent, rather than require specific shots.
Beast Mastery and Survival have also had some bug fixes, but no notable design changes this week. That doesn’t mean things are final.
edit: To clarify the point about Legacy of the Windrunners gaining bonuses from Aimed Shot, this is any buffs to crit chance or damage to Aimed Shot. Trick Shots will not be sending Wind Arrows all over the place.
This is the goal. It may not be there with current numbers, but these 3 points (yes, they are still 3 total points, Windrunner’s Guidance is 1-point again), is that this should be competitive. Maybe it needs to be from Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire. Maybe Arcane Shot/Chimaera shot can also cause it. There’s danger in lumping too much extra damage to Aimed Shot for PvP reasons – hypothetical numbers, if Aimed Shot normally does 1000 damage, but via procs can sometimes do 2500 damage, the damage swing is super high. A lot of bonuses were pulled out of Aimed Shot in BFA/Shadowlands and just lumped into Aimed Shot damage to try to keep its damage consistently strong.
Bulletstorm’s design is currently a buff that stacks up to 10, but doesn’t refresh duration as you gain stacks. It lets you get some big Multi-Shots in, but in a cyclical fashion.
There’s some potential tree restructure that has to happen if this is the case, because Rapid Fire is technically optional, and having a line of things coming off of rapid fire and not connecting anywhere else limits how you can move your points around the tree. That isn’t to say this isn’t possible, just that it’s more involved than just putting a node somewhere that buffs only Rapid Fire.
There are no plans to redesign any of the Mastery effects for Hunters.
PvP is a concern for abilities that sometimes deal big damage or heal lot. This is true for the game as a whole. We have tools available to change things in PvP compared to PvE. While these tools obviously work, it’s not intuitive that Aimed Shot does 1000 damage against a kobold, and 500 damage against a player because of a hidden multiplier.
There are also PvE concerns of your abilities swinging in damage a lot. Partly for tuning reasons, but also for how the game feels. Again using hypothetical numbers, if Aimed Shot does 1000 damage, but sometimes 2500, your damage variance from each boss attempt, or on that difficult M+ pack, or in the Mage Tower challenges, or wherever, is very unstable. Sometimes it’s OK for your damage to be very swingy, some specs inherently have a lot of randomness in how they play and that’s by design. Critical strikes are already a thing that exist that changes your damage a lot, but you don’t often pull a boss and think “oh, my aimed shot didn’t crit, lets reset and try again”. That’s obviously an extreme example, but if there’s so much randomness tied to one ability’s damage, and that ability is a significant part of your total throughput, maybe it’s a problem we should try to address.
I did not intend my question to be combative if it came off that way, it was just a question of how things look at a glance. For players who don’t rely on 3rd party sites or high end theorycrafting, if they look at the tree and see 5 things that only buff Aimed Shot, and Rapid Fire off to the side, Rapid Fire probably looks like a much less desirable button. When these 5 things buff both Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire, maybe it’s a good push in the right direction that Rapid Fire is an important button you should get, and these bonuses also work on that ability so you feel like you’re getting full value from them.
Neither direction is objectively correct or incorrect.
