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Category: Dragonflight

Dragonriding and You: Ascending to New Heights of Skill, Dragonflight Zone Preview: The Waking Shores

Blizzard has released 2 new blog posts, one for The Waking Shores zone and one with an explanation of the basics of Dragonriding.

Dragonriding and You: Ascending to New Heights of Skill

Quote from: Blizzard

A skilled Dragonrider is a force to be reckoned with, capable of catching up to any foe, ambushing enemies from above, and soaring above the Dragon Isles with impressive speed. Becoming a Dragonrider and learning the basics will be simple, but mastering this new skill takes practice. Once you figure out its intricacies, you’ll never see the Dragon Isles the same way again.

Dragonriding Basics

Through your travels on the Dragon Isles, you’ll begin training to become a Dragonrider. Dragonriding can only be used with Dragon Isles Drakes—customizable mounts with unique abilities. Throughout your leveling experience, you’ll earn four different Dragon Isles Drakes. In the hands of a skilled rider, these imposing winged terrors are capable of masterful maneuvers.

Each drake features unlockable appearances that can be selected and adjusted to make your new drake mount uniquely your own. You’ll receive new looks for your drakes through Drakewatcher Manuscripts, obtained from quest rewards, exploration, completing achievements, and various other means. Find the nearest Rostrum of Transformation in any Dragon Isles zone to make changes to your drake’s appearance.

Vigorous Riding

The first thing you’ll notice upon summoning a Dragon Isles Drake is that your primary action bar has been replaced with your Dragonriding skills, as well as a new resource: Vigor. Vigor is spent by using Dragonriding abilities and recharges automatically over time while grounded (mounted or on foot) or in the sky, while Dragonriding at high speeds.

Gaining Speed

Once you’re ready for takeoff, mount up and find a high rise. When you jump from it, your drake will unfurl its wings and begin to glide forward, slowly losing altitude. Point your dragon’s front towards the ground, and it will gain speed rapidly. Point it upwards, and it will slow down and gain altitude.

Managing your hang time depends entirely on your ability to gain speed by descending and maximizing your altitude while ascending without losing too much momentum. Vigor skills like Skyward Ascent will help you gain altitude, while others like Surge Forward will give you a quick speed boost to keep you going. Remember that your drake’s Vigor recharges when you’re speeding up; use that to your advantage as you build momentum.

Dragonriding Progression

Dragonriding features its own progression track, unlocked when you obtain your first Dragon Isles Drake. Through this progression track, you can unlock more abilities, increase your drake’s Vigor, and more. Dragon Glyphs, symbols of power scattered all over the skies of Dragon Isles, can be collected to advance your progress track and gain access to perks. Some Dragon Glyphs will be relatively simple to procure, while others will require a bit of exploration and clever use of your Dragonriding abilities to acquire. We hope you’ll find the journey and the sights along the way as compelling as hunting all the Dragon Glyphs.

Race to the Top

Once you’ve obtained your drakes and mastered their abilities, there’s one more way in which skilled Dragonriders can stand out: Dragonriding Races! All over the Dragon Isles, you will find various Dragonriding race locations that will challenge you to complete a set course within a limited timeframe. Clearing checkpoints extends your allotted time, and once you finish a course, you’ll be rated on your performance. Your personal best times will be recorded, and whenever you repeat a course, your time will be compared against your personal best. Challenge other Dragonriders to the ultimate test of skill and speed—only the fastest rider will prevail.

The Journey is Just Beginning

There’s more coming to Dragonflight as we progress through testing, including future updates to Dragonriding. We hope you’ve enjoyed this early preview and invite you to check https://worldofwarcraft.com/news for all the latest World of Warcraft previews and information. We’ll see you in the Dragon Isles!

Dragonflight Zone Preview: The Waking Shores

Quote from: Blizzard

The Waking Shores is the starting zone for Dragonflight and the most untamed area of the Dragon Isles.

The dragonflights left their homeland and the Waking Shores remained dormant for ten thousand years. Now, with Azeroth’s world-soul revitalized, the awesome primal might of the Shores stirs anew, rousing the dragons’ ancient allies and age-old enemies from their long millennia of slumber.

Heroes of the Alliance and Horde are invited by Alexstrasza to aid the red dragonflight in this vibrant and menacing land.

This land is stirring with the reawakening of elemental energies. Long ago, the elements were present in their most primal, unfettered form; however, the resurgence of magic in the Dragon Isles has caused that energy to reawaken.

Geysers and hot springs are commonplace, and powerful streams and rivers carve grottoes into the colorful rocks and sediment. Waterways feed into the land’s heart and the Life Pools of the red dragonflight.

While millennia ago this area was populated with dragon architecture like the rest of the Broodlands, most of those structures have long since fallen into decay and become overgrown.

Volcanic areas are alive with molten earth and fire. As the elevation rises, the land becomes harsher. In these imposing mountains, Neltharus, the Obsidian Citadel was built by the black dragonflight so that the Earth-Warder could defend the Broodlands. Abandoned long ago, the imposing fortress has now been claimed by the djaradin.

Inhabitants of the Waking Shores

Elemental magic manifests everywhere, with earth, air, water, and fire taking physical form. New types of elemental beings are rising, as well as animalistic creatures infused with this magic. Here are some that you will happen upon in your travels:

The Waking Shores are just the beginning of your adventures throughout the Dragon Isles. Help your allies push back against enemies, new and old, who are bent on controlling this ancient place of elemental power.

We look forward to sharing more details as development continues on Dragonflight. Visit the Dragonflight site to pre-order. Check WorldofWarcraft.com/news for updates and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See you in the Dragon Isles!

Dragonflight Alpha: Dragonriding and Paladin Feedback

With the new alpha build out, a lot of feedback has started coming in due to various changes and bugs too. Blizzard has responded to feedback on both dragonriding and paladins.

Feedback: Dragonriding

Quote from: Blizzard

We’ve just rolled out a hotfix to remedy this, which should be active in current builds. While existing characters might have trouble with this, new characters selecting these traits should no longer experience this issue.

Dragon Glyphs are account-wide. Right now, selecting traits doesn’t make selections for every character, but the amount of points available should be consistent across characters as any character claims a new Dragon Glyph.

Thank you very much for trying this out in courses and comparing your experience before/after. We’d like to make the “when” of turning matter a little bit more, but not overmuch. More feedback will help a ton as we move forward. We’re keeping an eye on feedback as we continue to iterate.

Thanks again!

Feedback: Paladins

Quote from: Blizzard

Hi, thanks for your feedback! A few Rank 2 spell upgrades were overlooked in the conversion – as noted, Divine Steed’s 15 sec cooldown reduction, and Avenger’s Shield’s silence. These will be included in the baseline version of the spell in future builds, along with fixes for some of the bugs you all have identified in this thread.

Avenger’s Shield is intentionally no longer generating Holy Power. This is part of an effort to constrain Shield of the Righteous uptime, and transfer some of protection paladins’ defensive power out of Shield of the Righteous and into other cooldowns and forms of mitigation. We want Shield of the Righteous to feel like it makes you strong, rather than an essential component of your baseline passive survivability.

As for Divine Toll, part of what has made that ability fun and impactful is its flood of resources. We’re exploring ideas for how to reincorporate this in a future version of this ability.

In general, thank you all and please keep the feedback coming! Your thoughts and opinions are helpful and valued as we continue to iterate on these trees.

Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes Updated For Phase 3, The Waking Shores, Mages, Paladins, Dragonriding Feature Updates

The Alpha has been updated for Phase 3 meaning we have plenty of new patch notes! The Waking Shores Zone, Ruby Life Pools Dungeon, Mages, Paladins and much more!

Quote from: Blizzard

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

DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES

  • The Waking Shores

NEW FEATURES

  • Dragonriding
    • The Dragonriding Talent Tree is now available.
    • Dragonriding now features advanced turning tech that helps the drakes feel more weighty and turning more of a decision.
    • While boosted to very fast speeds, new tech will adjust the camera’s field-of-view. This can be disabled with the “Reduce Camera Motion” option inside the “Motion Sickness” section of the “Accessibility” menu.
    • When running into objects and walls, velocity is now lost based on angle and collision duration.
    • Dragon Glyphs are hidden throughout the skies over the Waking Shores! Fly through them to unlock achievements.
    • The Dragonriding Skill Track is now accessible at the dragonriding trainer Lithragosa located in Skytop Observatory.
      • Not all skills are displayed or implemented, but the player may earn points by collecting Dragon Glyphs and spend them for progression.
    • The Renewed Proto-Drake is now customizable in the Rostrum of Transformation.

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

  • Ruby Life Pools

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

  • Maximum Level: 62
  • There was an unexpected issue that required us to disable Dwarves and Mechagnomes player characters in this build. New characters of these races cannot be made at this time, and existing characters will be temporarily locked. We hope to have this resolved soon.

CLASSES

  • NEW TALENT SYSTEM
    • Mage
      • Developers’ note: The Mage trees in Dragonflight are focused on offering new talents to explore, supporting underrepresented archetypes and builds, and allowing for cross-specialization abilities. We want Mages to feel like they aren’t limited to their primary school of magic, and with enough commitment, they are capable of harnessing powerful abilities from a variety of different magic sources at once. The specialization trees are built to maintain the core fantasy of each specialization while tidying up existing gameplay through talents such as a reworked Alexstrasza’s Fury for Fire Mages, Wintertide for Frost Mages, and introducing a new major cooldown, Arcane Surge, for Arcane Mages. In addition to the talent changes above, we’re making several baseline changes to spells such as Ignite spreading via Fire Blast instead of Phoenix Flames and Flurry moving to a default instant cast, charge-based design. We’re hoping these new trees and talent designs allow you to customize your character in new and exciting ways and we’re looking forward to your feedback!
    • Paladin: Protection and Retribution
      • Developers’ note: With the Paladin talent trees in Dragonflight, we wanted to embrace the class’ knight heritage and the full breadth of its group stewardship. In the class tree, Paladins will see your utility front-and-center, and whether you prefer the fantasy of the crusader or the guardian, we hope that new options such as Seal of the Templar, Recompense, and Afterimage will help you lean into your vision. Blessing of Spellwarding has additionally been made class-wide. Protection Paladins will find a returning Eye of Tyr in your spec tree, as well as an array of options to tailor and enhance many of your signature abilities (both offensive and defensive) to best emphasize your own playstyle. Retribution Paladins will find options that integrate Consecration into their core rotation, a new vision for the returning ability, Exorcism, and other ways of obtaining Holy Power depending on playstyle in addition to new and returning enhancements to their iconic abilities.In this week’s build, Paladins will have access to their new Class, Protection and Retribution talent trees. While we’re still working on the Holy specialization, we wanted to bring our other specialization trees online early so we can get community feedback as early as possible. The Holy tree currently in this week’s Alpha is the existing Shadowlands’ talent tree, in addition to containing all of their other abilities. This is placeholder and not indicative of their final tree, and we will be bringing the Holy tree to Alpha as soon as its ready.
      • Known Issue: Unlearning the Crusade talent while also having the Avenging Wrath talent from the Class tree will cause you to keep Crusade and it’s override effect on Avenging Wrath. This can be fixed via relogging and will be corrected in a future Alpha build.

PROFESSIONS

  • Jewelcrafting
    • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, Jewelcrafting has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. While cutting gems and Prospecting remain the focus of Jewelcrafting in Dragonflight, we’re also expanding the amount of novelty items that Jewelcrafting can craft, with new Statues, toys and other consumables. We’re also interested in feedback on the new Primalist gems and the Tiered Medallion Setting consumable, which will allow you to add additional sockets to your Dragonflight Necklaces.
  • Leatherworking
    • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, Leatherworking has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. In addition to feedback on the recipes and consumable items from Leatherworking, we’re also interested in feedback on the new Equip and Set effects that can be found on multiple crafted Leathworking pieces.
  • Specializations
    • 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 Instructataur’s Top Secret Guide, on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor that gives players 50 Specialization points. Below are a few Specialization paths:
      • Jewelcrafting
        • Faceting — Improve at cutting gems, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill for all gem cuts per point in this specialization.
          • Fire — Improve at cutting gems with fire, gaining +1 Crafting Skill for all fire cuts per point in this specialization.
        • Enterprising — Improve in the business of jewelcrafting, gaining +1 Crafting Skill for miscellaneous crafts per point in this specialization.
          • Prospecting — Improve in the delicate task of prospecting to increase yield and efficiency, gaining +1 Resourcefulness when prospecting per point in this specialization.
      • Leatherworking
        • Chain Armor Crafting — Improve at making mail armor, gaining +1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.
          • Intricate Chain — Improve at making intricate chain armor for the hands, feet, shoulders and waist, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.
        • Primordial Leatherworking — Improve at Primordial Leatherworking, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill when crafting elemental, bestial, and decay Leatherworking patters per point in this specialization.
          • Decaying Grasp — Improve at crafting decay patterns, gaining + 1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.
    • Known Issues
      • Existing Specialization trees will be wiped for this week’s Alpha build. Players will need to re-learn their specialization paths, which can be expedited by buying Specialization points via the Professor Instructataur’s Top Secret Guide consumable on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor.
      • Leatherworking: Feral Hide Drums cannot be crafted. This will be fixed in a later build.
      • Jewelcrafting: Prospecting Ore does not currently differentiate between different Quality, resulting in the same prospecting output regardless of Ore Quality. This will be fixed in a later build.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSBILITY

  • New HUD UI — Get ready for a fully updated and customizable Heads Up Display (HUD) User Interface (UI) that’s been created with contemporary displays in mind, designed to be effective, attractive, and accessible.
    • Unit frames are now in a new default location near the player.
    • Edit Mode
      • Added the grid checkbox and slider
      • Added Player, Target and Focus frame
      • Added stance bar
      • Added “Snap to Right Side” to the right action bar settings
  • The Barbershop services are now free of cost.

Dragonflight Alpha: Hunter Talent Trees Changing

Blizzard posted another big update on the Alpha forums detailing big changes they are making to the hunter talent trees in the next alpha build based on the feedback that has been given. They also made clear that ranged Survival will not be an option in this new talent tree.

Quote from: Blizzard

The next build to alpha will have some pretty substantial changes for the hunter talent trees. Many talent nodes have had their position shuffled around, as well as connections, so this won’t be an exact list of what specific talent node moved to what new position and what it connects to. Some of this may be redundant information with previous posts:

Baseline Changes:

  • Mend Pet has been bumped up from 35% of Pet’s HP over its duration, to 50% of pet’s HP.

Class Tree:

  • The placeholder Agility % node has been replaced with an Avoidance node.
  • Improved Exhilaration (the pet healing) is now part of the baseline Exhilaration ability. This has been replaced with Rejuvenating Winds.
  • Viper’s Venom in the choice node after Serpent Sting has been replaced with Hydra’s Bite.
  • Binding Shackles is planned to work with any combination of Scatter Shot, Explosive Trap, Binding Shot, and Intimidation. This should make sense with the new tree layout.

Beast Mastery

  • Dire Pack has been redesigned. Every X Dire Beasts summoned now resets the cooldown of Kill Command, and reduces the cooldown and Focus Cost of Kill Command for a duration.
  • New talent added that increases the duration and damage of any Dire Beast summon.

Marksmanship:

  • Steady Focus values lowered to 4/8%, rather than 7/15%.
  • Hunter’s Knowledge and Focused Aim now boost Rapid Fire damage and crit chance in addition to Aimed Shot.
  • Salvo has been renamed to Bombardment and redesigned – Arcane Shots increases the damage of your next Multi-Shot by X%, stacking up to 4 times.
  • Explosive Ricochet renamed to Salvo, and design adjusted. Multi-Shot now also shoots Explosive Shot at up to 2 targets hit. This can only occur once every 45 sec.
  • Killer Ricochet renamed and redesigned, is now Razor Fragments – When Trick Shots fades or is consumed, your next Kill Shot does X% more damage, and causes up to 5 targets to bleed for Y% of the damage dealt over 6 sec. This node comes right after Deathblow , which may be in a different position in the tree now.
  • Bursting Shot and Quick Load are no longer a dependency for any talent node on the tree.

Survival

  • Terms of Engagement and Improved Harpoon talents have been combined and now only requires 1 talent point total.
  • Several abilities reduced to 1 or 2 total points, down from 2 or 3 total points.
  • Precision Removed
  • Frenzy Strikes now also applies its cooldown reduction to Flanking Strike.
    • Note: there’s an issue where this talent will incorrectly be able to be obtained by a prior node without the Butchery/Carve node, this connection will be removed in a future update.
  • Wildfire Infusions – Volatile Bomb has been adjusted because Serpent Sting is no longer a baseline, guaranteed to have ability. This bomb will continue to deal bonus damage to a target affected by Serpent Sting, and will also apply Serpent Sting to some number of targets it hits.
  • Viper’s Venom is now in the survival talent tree with a redesign. Raptor Strike and Mongoose Bite have a chance to apply Serpent Sting to your target.
  • New Talent – Ranger – Increases the damage of Steady Shot, Kill Shot, Explosive Shot, and Serpent Sting.
  • New Talent – Intense Focus – increases focus generated by Kill Command
  • New Talent – Ruthless Marauder – Fury of the Eagle has a 15% increased critical strike chance against targets below 20% health, and Fury of the Eagle critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Wildfire Bomb and Flanking Strike by 0.5 sec.
    • The critical strike chance and cooldown reduction values go up per rank, the 20% HP threshold does not change.

This is a lot to parse, and things above are not final. Thanks for the discussions so far, we appreciate it.

Quote from: Blizzard

Before expectations might get out of hand, we don’t have any intention of making a ranged Survival “subspec” of the sorts. The Ranger talent is not intended to divert your gameplay into using Steady Shot instead of Raptor Strike/Mongoose Bite. Hunters as a whole have some ranged attacks, and Survival hunters, while primarily melee, do still shoot things.

The intent of the Ranger talent is to bump your ranged damage up a bit for encounters or PvP or whatever gameplay where that is important, not turn Survival into a full ranged DPS spec. We still intend Survival to be in melee, with a melee weapon, doing melee things. Sometimes they also shoot.

Quote from: Blizzard

The 7/15% that is on the alpha right now is just a data error on our end, there was not a goal of doubling the value of the talent from Shadowlands to Dragonflight.

Steady Focus also should hopefully feel less mandatory as a path towards Trueshot with the upcoming layout changes.

Dragonflight Previews: The Forbidden Reach Zone, Get to Know the Dracthyr Evoker

Yesterday Blizzard posted two new Dragonflight preview posts. This time they focussed on the Dracthyr Evoker and their starting zone, The Forbidden Reach.

Dragonflight Zone Preview: The Forbidden Reach Zone

Quote from: Blizzard

The Forbidden Reach, once the secret training grounds of the black dragonflight, has descended into a broken and deserted landscape, lost to the ravages of time. Those few dragons who remember the island know that it is taboo to visit, a place where something dreadful fell. Those who have braved the shores found little of consequence in this cauldron-like caldera apart from a shattered landscape and nature-claimed ruins half buried by magma.

No Longer Forgotten

Neltharion the Earth-Warder fashioned these lands as a secret training ground for the ultimate soldiers, the dracthyr. But in the aftermath of a terrible battle, the island lay dormant and abandoned for ages.

A dracthyr looks at an island surrounded by water with dragons flying overhead

An image of an old gate with trees, plants, and statues

Time To Wake

Deep beneath the surface, vast underground chambers contain legions of dracthyr, resting in magical stasis for thousands of years. As an ancient, magical surge ripples through the Forbidden Reach, the dracthyr are waking from their long slumber.

An image of three dracthyr standing still

In this place of ancient power, dracthyr Evokers will begin a journey that will lead them further into the mysteries of their past.

An image of a large chamber filled with tables and chairs, and a dracthyr

An image of a large door surrounded by rocks in a storm

Inhabitants of the Forbidden Reach

Over the ages, the Forbidden Reach has been reclaimed by nature and wildlife who have made this land their home. Here are some that you’ll meet on your journey.

An image of an otter like creature

An image of fox like creatures with wings

An image of a large pink flying beetle

Journey through the Forbidden Reach and dive into the mysteries of the past as enemies and potential allies, new and old, are drawn to this place of ancient power.

We look forward to sharing more details as development continues on Dragonflight. Visit the Dragonflight site for more information. Check WorldofWarcraft.com/news for updates and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See you in the Dragon Isles!

Dragonflight Preview: Get to Know the Dracthyr Evoker

Quote from: Blizzard

Your awakening was unprecedented, but the time has come to claim your place in the world of Azeroth. The Dragon Isles are waiting for you to discover your purpose and awaken your wing mates in your new adventures. You will not be so easily contained.

Created by Neltharion the Earth-Warder the essence of dragons was combined with the adaptability of the mortal races to create an elite soldier capable of switching from a draconic form to humanoid form. Long in a magical stasis, they are now awakening to a new threat within the Dragon Isles. It is in the Forbidden Reach that the dracthyr will start their journey to reclaim their fractured memories and face a new reality.

Dracthyr Evoker Quick Facts:

  • Class: Evoker
  • Two Forms: Dracthyr and Visage
  • Armor Type: Mail
  • Weapon Types: Intellect Daggers, Fist Weapons, Axes, Maces, Swords, Staves
  • Specializations: Devastation (DPS) and Preservation (Healing)
  • Alignment: Horde or Alliance (chosen at character creation)
  • Starting Level: 58

Creating Your Dracthyr Evoker

Dracthyr Evokers are a new Hero class and begin their adventures at level 58. Creating your first dracthyr has no restrictions other than it requires Dragonflight and you are only able to have one dracthyr per realm. Subsequent dracthyr can only be created once there is a level 50 (non-dracthyr) character on the realm you wish to create it.

You will also choose your faction on character creation along with all the various elements that make your dracthyr uniquely— you. There are a multitude of options and combinations you can choose. (We wish you luck in your endeavor. You’re going to need it.)

The Color of Magic

Dracthyr Evokers were created to wield the magic of all five dragonflights providing a very distinctive style of spell casting. You will be able to see the coalescence of these powers each time you cast. Evokers also have two distinctive specializations which take advantage of these magic types: Devastation and Preservation.

Devastation is a ranged DPS specialization that uses the power of the red and blue dragonflights to do devastating damage to their foes.

Blue Spells: Focused and overwhelming power
Red Spells: Fast explosive power

Preservation is a healing specialization that uses the power of the green and bronze dragonflights to heal their allies in battle.

Green Spells: Nurture and heal
Bronze Magic: Bend and manipulate time

Each ability associated with a dragonflight will have the name listed both in the spellbook and in the tooltip.

Becoming Empowered

Dracthyr Evokers have special Empowered abilities that they can use to change the strength of the spell or ability they are casting. By holding down a button on your keyboard or mouse, you will power up a spell. The longer you charge the spell, the more damage it could do or the more targets the spell could hit.

For example, one Empowered spell first learned is called Fire Breath. Fire Breath can be powered up as a Level I, Level II, or Level III spell. An indicator bar will appear when casting to display the level of the spell that will be cast. Releasing the button or moving before completing a cast will stop the spell from going off provided it hasn’t reached one of those levels. Releasing the spell when the indicator is within the range of the level indicated will cast at that level.

At each level, the amount of damage done when using Fire Breath is increased. Not all Empowered abilities are alike, and over time, you will learn how to make the most of them.

Embracing your Draconic Nature

Dracthyr have two racial abilities that truly embrace the nature of this race: Wing Buffet and Tail Sweep.

Wing Buffet: With a powerful flap of your wings, knock away your enemies in front of you.
Tail Sweep: Lash out with your tail, knocking enemies within 6 yards into the air.

You will also learn to Glide which you can activate by using the jump key while falling to slow your descent.

Better than simply gliding slowly to the ground beneath you, you will also learn how to Soar for a time to move around the land. To get the most lift to your loft and go the distance, you’ll want to hone your timing and start from a higher elevation such as the edge of a cliff.

Soar: Muster your strength and launch into the air.

There are several other base abilities that will enhance your time spent as an elite dracthyr Evoker including the Living Flame spell which you can use to either damage enemies or heal yourself.

Living Flame (Red): Send a flickering flame toward your target, dealing Fire damage to an enemy or healing an ally.

In Essence

Select spells and abilities require a resource known as Essence. This is displayed under your character portrait as five small opalescent globes and will automatically refill over time. One such spell that uses Essence is Disintegrate, which is the first spell you will learn as you progress through the starting area for the dracthyr.

Disintegrate (Blue): Tear into the enemy with a blast of blue magic, inflicting Spellfrost damage, and slowing their movement speed.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and there is more to explore during testing. We look forward to reading your feedback and we will see you in the Dragon Isles.

Dragonflight Dev Interview – Manacrew, Season 4 Fated Raid Schedule

Another dev interview for Dragonflight has made its way to the internet, this time Manacrew interviewed Morgan Day. The following new bits of information were discussed:

  • They are putting out blog posts explaining new features as they make their way to the Alpha so that not just those that got an invite to the Alpha can give feedback but the WoW community as a whole can too
  • They’re confident they’ll be able to release content at a pace that’ll satisfy the player base in DF
  • They see DF as a chance to rebuild the foundations of WoW systems, to make systems such as talents much more future proof
  • They have some fun plans in store for fishing with the Tuskarr. What would co-op fishing look like for example?
  • The main focus of the expansion will be the Dragon Isles, but they are always looking for stories to tell on mainland Azeroth
  • They have nothing to announce yet on a new Threads of Fate type system but they do want to offer players different ways of leveling up their alts
  • They have big plans for M+ but are not ready to announce them yet

Previous Interview/Information recaps:
WoW: Dragonflight Alpha Launch – Interview/Information Roundup
WoW: Dragonflight Alpha Launch – Interview/Information Roundup Part 2
WoW: Dragonflight Alpha Launch – Interview/Information Roundup Part 3

Season 4 Fated Raid Schedule

Blizzard also posted the fated raids schedule and it is perhaps not very surprisingly in Shadowlands raid release order.

Quote from: Blizzard

As we are approaching closer to the launch of Season 4 on the week of 2 August, we wanted to provide the Fated Raid schedule in advance so that raid groups can start their preparations and planning.

Fated Raids will be on the following weekly rotation:

  • August 2 – Fated Castle Nathria
  • August 9 – Fated Sanctum of Domination
  • August 16 – Fated Sepulcher of the First Ones
  • August 23 – Fated Castle Nathria
  • August 30 – Fated Sanctum of Domination
  • September 6 – Fated Sepulcher of the First Ones
  • And so on until the rotation is removed and all raids are Fated later in the season.

While a raid is Fated, it will only be available in Fated difficulty, but the other two raids will still be available that week in their non-Fated difficulty.

See you in Season 4!

Dragonflight Alpha Phase 2 Development Notes, Hotfixes: July 19, 2022

The Dragonflight Alpha is already moving into phase 2 of testing! The Azure Span has been disabled, two dungeons open up as well as the Dracthyr Evoker starting experience and we get our first look at Profession Specialisations! Additionally we got our first hotfixes on the live servers in quite a while. The 50% exp buff has been enabled and there are a couple of bug fixes.

Dragonflight Alpha Phase 2 Development Notes

Quote from: Blizzard

Hello everyone! Here are this week’s updates to Dragonflight Alpha:

NEW ZONES

  • The Forbidden Reach (Dracthyr Starting Zone)
  • Removed: The Azure Span

NEW DUNGEONS

  • Neltharus
  • Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr

CHARACTER LEVEL
Developers’ note: This week we have removed the Azure Span zone to allow alpha testers to focus on the Dracthyr starting experience in the Forbidden Reach, the two new level 60 dungeons, the profession changes, and the talent revamps. 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.

  • Level 58 Dracthyr Template (The Forbidden Reach starting experience)
  • Level 60 Character Template
  • Level 60 Max

CLASSES

  • TALENT REVAMP
    • Shaman
      • Developers’ note: With the Shaman talent trees in Dragonflight, we wanted to hone in on some core concepts that are unique to the class. Totems have long been a special thing for Shaman, and we’re giving some new options to manipulate your totems position, radius, duration, cleanse poisons, or even potentially reset the cooldown. We’re bringing back Alpha Wolf for Enhancement Shaman, spreading some Stormkeeper functionality to Restoration Shaman, and trying out a new variation of Elemental Blast for Elemental Shaman, where it replaces Earth Shock as a more expensive Maelstrom Spender. All three of the Shaman specializations have a distinct style of play, and we’re hoping the new talents allow you to focus on your important totems, utility, and style of damage or healing you enjoy.

PROFESSIONS

  • Cooking
    • Developers’ note: Firelord Nomi is back and well versed in all of the new Cooking recipes in Dragonflight. He is located next to the other Profession Trainers in the Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar and the Trade District in Stormwind. Players can interact with Firelord Nomi to both train their Cooking skill and obtain reagents for Cooking recipes.
  • Specializations
    • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, Alchemy and Blacksmithing Professions now have their Specializations enabled. Unlocking Specializations requires 25 skill in that Profession. Once unlocked, players can spend Specialization points to unlock various bonuses for their Profession. For the purposes of Alpha we’ve added a consumable, Professor Instructataur’s Top Secret Guide, on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor that gives players 50 Specialization points. Below are a few Specialization paths for Alchemy and Blacksmithing:
      • Potion Mastery – Improve at crafting potions and related alchemist stones, gaining +1 Crafting Skill per point in this specialization.
        • Batch Production – Master the art of producing potions more efficiently, gaining +1 Multicraft per point in this specialization.
      • Weaponsmithing – Improve at making weapons and large tools, gaining +1 Crafting Skill per point in this Specialization.
        • Long Blades – Improve at making long bladed weapons and tools such as swords, glaives and sickles, gaining +1 Crafting Skill per point in this Specialization.

With the new Alpha build deployed to the servers Wowhead has started datamining it. They have already found that the new mount for the 500 mounts achievement is an otter!

Hotfixes: July 19, 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

World Events

  • Winds of Wisdom 50% experience buff is now available until Shadowlands Season 4 begins.

Covenants

  • Venthyr
    • Fixed an issue that prevented the Obliterate Ember Gnats event in Revendreth’s Ember Court from working as intended.

Dungeons and Raids

  • Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
    • Fixed an issue causing items to sometimes become permanently uninteractible during the Market trading game.

Player versus Player

  • Paladin
    • Protection
      • (4) Set Bonus: Judgment cast from Luminous Chevalier’s Gallantry will no longer interrupt Fleshcraft (Necrolord Ability).
    • Retribution
      • Fixed an issue that could cause the additional Templar’s Verdict triggered by Templar’s Vindication (Conduit) to fail to cast against moving targets.
  • Warlock
    • Fixed an issue that could cause Grimoire of Sacrifice (Talent) to be removed from the Warlock during the Arena and Battleground preparation period.