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Category: Shadowlands

Hotfixes: August 18, 2022

Blizzard has released a small hotfix patch that includes a fix to Dinar bought items and the Shrouded M+ affix.

Quote from: Blizzard

August 18, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Mythic+
    • Affixes
      • Shrouded
        • Adjusted the health, melee damage, and ability damage of Nathrezim Infiltrators.
        • Vampiric Claws cooldown increased to 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
          • Developers’ note: We discovered an issue that caused Nathrezim Infiltrators to have inconsistent health and damage, and as part of resolving the issue we had to adjust their health and damage values. The net result is that Nathrezim Infiltrators should feel slightly less powerful than they did previously.

Items and Rewards

  • Fixed an issue where items purchased with Puzzling Cartel Dinar could not be refunded.
  • Fixed an issue where Enforcer’s Stun Grenade, Kihra’s Adrenaline Injector, and Fleshrender’s Meathook did not reset their cooldowns upon ending an encounter.

Dragonflight Alpha Phase 6 Starts, Hotfixes – 17 August 2022

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.

Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes Update

Quote from: Blizzard

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
      • Outdoor Elite locations: Cobalt Assembly, Obsidian Citadel, Tyrhold
      • 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.

Hotfixes – 17 August 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

AUGUST 17, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Timewalking
    • Valt of the Wardens
      • Glazer
        • Temporarily disabled the Focus ability.

Quests

  • The objective text for the raid quest “Turning the Wheel” now correctly states that 15 boss kills are required.

Hotfixes – 16 August, 2022, Dragonflight Alpha Extended Maintenance August 16-17

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!

Hotfixes – 16 August, 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

AUGUST 16, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Mythic+
    • Grimrail Depot
      • Skylord Tovra
        • Rakun’s Diffused Energy zone positions have been adjusted, but also now show a warning visual at their location prior to becoming dangerous.
        • Spinning Spear is now correctly assigned the Stun mechanic, allowing the loss of control UI to function correctly.

Items and Rewards

  • Increased the vendor cost of Penumbra Thread to 11 gold (was 9 gold).
    • Developers’ note: This price change is to balance the decreased cost of reagents with the change to a regional commodity Auction House.

Player versus Player

  • The Conquest cap has been removed.
  • Spoils of War 25% Conquest and 40% Honor increased buff is now available until Shadowlands Season 4 ends.

Burning Crusade Classic

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the PvP leaderboards from updating as expected.

Dragonflight Alpha Extended Maintenance August 16-17

Quote from: Blizzard

We encountered an issue during today’s Alpha update that will require an extended maintenance to resolve.

We hope to reopen the Alpha for further testing on the new build tomorrow, Wednesday, August 17.

New Services Advertisement Policy, Hotfixes: August 15, 2022, It’s Time for The Great Push and WoW Variety Show!

Patch 9.2.7 is launching with this week’s weekly reset and in addition to many tuning hotfixes coming for M+ as well as one for Fated raids, Blizzard has clarified their policy for boosting services for gold moving forward with the introduction of the new trade channel just for services. On the esports side of things Blizzard has announced details for The Great Push and the hosts for the new WoW Variety Show they announced a little while ago.

New Services Advertisement Policy

Quote from: Blizzard

This week the 9.2.7 update introduces the new chat channel: Trade (Services). The Trade (Services) chat channel is used for searching and advertising services like raiding, dungeons, or PvP activities, keeping the original Trade chat channel available for traditional buying and selling of items and profession services.

With the separation of trade services into its own chat channel, a new policy will take place. Any boosting, carrying, or other similar services offered for gold that’s advertised outside of the Trade (Services) chat channel will be considered spam and the proper actions will be taken, so be sure to switch your service advertisements to the new chat channel when it becomes available after this week’s regional maintenance.

Hotfixes: August 15, 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

August 15, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Fated Raids
    • [With realm restarts] Enemy health reduced by 5% in Fated Heroic and Fated Mythic difficulties.
      • Developers’ note: We feel this health reduction will smooth over some of the roughest edges in the raid without devaluing the experience.
  • Mythic+
    • Affixes
      • Shrouded
        • Nightmare Clouds will now despawn more quickly when Nathrezim Infiltrators are captured.
    • Grimrail Depot
      • [With realm restarts] Grimrail Technician’s 50,000 Volts cast time increased to 3.5 seconds (was 2.5 seconds).
    • Iron Docks
      • [With realm restarts] Charging Slash is now only cast by Grom’kar Footsoldiers.
      • [With realm restarts] Grom’kar Footsoldier’s Charging Slash damage reduced by 35%.
      • [With realm restarts] Ogron Laborer’s Thundering Stomp damage reduced by 25%.
      • [With realm restarts] Thunderlord Wrangler’s Throw damage is now reduced by armor.
      • [With realm restarts] Rampaging Clefthoof’s health reduced by 15%.
      • Grimrail Enforcers
        • Resolved an issue where the enemies would fail to cast abilities in specific locations within their encounter area.
    • Return to Karazhan: Lower
      • [With realm restarts] Arcane Warden’s Volatile Charge damage reduced by 40%.
      • [With realm restarts] Skeletal Usher’s Flashlight damage reduced by 20%.
      • [With realm restarts] Skeletal Usher’s health reduced by 25%.
      • [With realm restarts] Spectral Patron’s Uppercut damage reduced by 20%.
      • [With realm restarts] Phantom Crew’s Hammer Down now has a 1.5 second cast time (was instant) and increases damage taken by 25% (was 50%).
      • Resolved an issue that caused Blood Death Knight’s Dancing Rune Weapon to strike unintended targets with Blood Boil through floors.
      • The Opera Hall: Beautiful Beast
        • [With realm restarts] Coggleston’s Dent Armor now has a 1.5 second cast time (was instant).
        • [With realm restarts] Silver Fork’s Bloody Jab initial damage reduced by 20%.
      • Maiden of Virtue
        • [With realm restarts] Holy Bulwark absorb reduced by 10%.
      • Attumen the Huntsman
        • [With realm restarts] Intangible Presence damage reduced by 50%.
    • Return to Karazhan: Upper
      • [With realm restarts] Wrathguard Flamebringer’s Cleave and Strike damage reduced by 20%.
      • [With realm restarts] Wrathguard Flamebringer will no longer cast Slide.
      • Shade of Medivh
        • [With realm restarts] Guardian’s Image’s Shimmer damage reduced by 25%.
      • Mana Devourer
        • [With realm restarts] Energy Discharge damage reduced by 30%.
      • Viz’aduum the Watcher
        • Shadow Phlegm damage increased by 150%, travel speed reduced by 100%, and radius reduced to 4 yards (was 6 yards).
    • Tazavesh: Soleah’s Gambit
      • [With realm restarts] Invigorating Fish Stick cast time increased to 2 seconds (was 1.5 seconds).

Items and Rewards

  • [With realm restarts] Enforcer’s Stun Grenade Versatility increased by 96%.
  • [With realm restarts] Fleshrender’s Meathook Intellect increased by 17%.
  • [With realm restarts] Kihra’s Adrenaline Injector Agility increased by 17%.
    • Developers’ note: Updated several Warlords of Draenor Mythic+ trinkets to modern standards.

It’s Time for The Great Push and WoW Variety Show!

Quote from: Blizzard

Showtime! Everything you need to know to watch The Great Push, beginning on August 19, and the WoW© Variety Show on August 24.

 

The Great Push, Shadowlands Season 4: August 19 – September 4

Following the epic culmination of the Mythic Dungeon International 2022 season, we’ve turned our attention to Shadowlands Season 4 with the return of The Great Push. Teams from around the world battled through Mechagon and Karazhan in the Proving Grounds, with the top 6 teams in each region advancing to the main event. Over the next two weekends, they will compete in regional qualifiers with XX teams facing off in a final three-day global contest for their share of the $210,000 (USD) prize pool. The action begins Friday, August 19 at 10 a.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. CEST, live on YouTube & Twitch.

TGP2022_Schedule_1920x1080 (2.png

Details

  • Venue: Online – YouTube.com/Warcraft & Twitch.tv/Warcraft
  • Dates: Friday, August 19 – Sunday, September 4, 2022
    • Americas Qualifiers: August 19 – August 21
    • Europe Qualifiers: August 26 – August 28
    • Global Finals: September 2 – September 4
  • Broadcast Start Time: 10:00 a.m. PT / 7:00 p.m. CEST
  • Prize Pool: $210,000 (USD)
  • Format: Teams have 5 hours each day and their highest Keystone for each dungeon at the end of the weekend will be combined to determine standings
  • Brackets: Follow the brackets & dungeons live as they are unveiled on Raider.IO
  • Language Streams on YouTube:

 

WoW Variety Show: August 24

Lights, camera, action! The WoW Variety Show is ready to roll on August 24, live on Twitch! A combination of celebrity contestants and registered participants will compete in three activities: a leveling race with players facing surprising challenges as they progress through the levels, a scavenger hunt, and a race through Azeroth to close the show. The WoW Variety Show goes live at 5:00 p.m. PDT / 8:00 p.m. EDT with your hosts, Taliesin and Evitel! Follow WoW Esports on Twitter to catch the unveiling of the celebrity contestants closer to the show.

TandEAnnounce.jpeg

Details

  • Venue: Online – Twitch.tv/Warcraft
  • Date: August 24, 2022
  • Broadcast Start Time: 5:00 p.m. PDT / 8:00 p.m. EDT
  • Format: Three Activities during the show: Levelling, Scavenger Hunt, and Race through Azeroth
  • In-Game: Played on North American servers

 

Stay Connected

Tune in this weekend to YouTube.com/Warcraft and Twitch.tv/Warcraft and follow along for more updates on the WoW Esports Twitter. Good luck and have fun!

Hotfixes: August 12, 2022, Auction House Listings Next Reset, Alpha Feedback: Paladins & Hunters

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:

Hotfixes: August 12, 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

August 12, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Fated Sanctum of Domination
    • Guardian of the First Ones
      • Resolved an issue where additional Fated Powers could fail to appear after the first power appeared.
  • Mythic+
    • Affixes
      • Shrouded
        • Improved visual clarity for Nightmare Cloud.
        • Nightmare Cloud should no longer remove players from Stealth.
        • Improved visual clarity for Carrion Swarm.
        • Carrion Swarm range reduced to 15 yards (was 20).
      • Sanguine
        • No longer heals Invigorating Fish Sticks in Tazavesh: Soleah’s Gambit.

Auction House Listings Next Reset

Quote from: Blizzard
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.

Alpha Feedback: Paladins

Quote from: Blizzard

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.

Alpha Feedback: Hunters

Quote from: Blizzard
Hello again Hunters,

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.

Quote from: Blizzard

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.

Quote from: Blizzard

I should clarify my post above a bit more.

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.

Quote from: Blizzard

If they only buff Aimed Shot, does that make Rapid Fire less desirable because it has fewer modifiers than Aimed Shot?

Quote from: Blizzard

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.

Season 4 PvP Update: Removing the Conquest Cap and Spoils of War, Shadowlands 9.2.7 Update Notes, The Auction House Joins the WoW Companion App

Blizzard has announced that the Conquest Cap for Season 4 is being lifted with the next weekly reset! Additionally patch 9.2.7 will be launching next week and The Mobile Auction House makes a return.

Season 4 PvP Update: Removing the Conquest Cap and Spoils of War

Quote from: Blizzard

We’ve been hearing the feedback from the community to lift the Conquest Cap for Shadowlands Season 4. We’re happy to announce that we will be doing so with next week’s resets (Wednesday, August 17), but also want to offer some explanation on why we were initially hesitant to do so.

  • First, we understand the sentiment regarding how Valor is uncapped this season while Conquest remains capped. However, the two currencies are not exactly alike in design or purpose. For example, there is no Valor vendor where you can purchase the specific item that you want. While Conquest is used to acquire specific items at a vendor, Valor is used to upgrade items that have dropped randomly from the Great Vault or from running M+ dungeons.
  • Second, we know that once the Conquest cap is removed, many players will set out to acquire a full set of gear as quickly as possible, creating a significant power gap between themselves and any characters that are new to the season. We generally do not remove the cap until later in the season when we feel many players who have been playing all season have had the opportunity to acquire a full set of gear. This allows the competitive environment to remain closer during the early part of the season.
  • Finally, the Conquest cap serves to throttle gear acquisition to a rate comparable with the other main parts of the endgame, Raids and M+.

By lifting the cap early, we understand that some of the above issues may arise. But in this shortened and experimental final season of Shadowlands, we want to take an opportunity to be flexible and responsive to your feedback.

In addition to the Conquest cap removal, there are two more PvP changes that we want everybody to be aware of:

  1. The Spoils of War buff will be reactivated with next week’s reset, so players taking part in Battlegrounds and Arena will have their Conquest gains increased by 25% and Honor gains increased by 40%. This is planned to remain active for the rest of Season 4.
  2. For the Solo Shuffle Brawl, the minimum item level floor has been increased to 278 (is currently 252). This is already live.

Thank you for your feedback and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

Shadowlands 9.2.7 Update Notes

Quote from: Blizzard

The Shadowlands 9.2.7 update arrives to World of Warcraft on 17 August!

AUCTION HOUSE UPDATE: REGION-WIDE COMMODITIES

  • Auction Houses across all realms on a given region will now share commodity listings (gems, herbs, flasks, consumables, etc.). Items that aren’t commodities–like armor and weapons–will continue to be realm-specific.

THE AUCTION HOUSE JOINS THE WOW COMPANION APP

  • Players can now do the following from the WoW Companion App:
    • Browse and view current auctions
    • Bid and buyout auctions
    • Search for auctions
    • Add and remove items from your Favorites list
    • View and cancel your listed auctions
    • Developers’ note:  We are very pleased to be able to bring the Auction House back as a part of the WoW Companion App. The new app update provides a way for players to make purchases, view listings, and more. Due to our desire to provide an Auction House experience in a more immediate timeframe we have excluded listing items for sale. While we understand selling items is a much-loved part of the past feature from the previous Remote Auction House, we wanted to provide access to many of the features regularly used by players as quickly as we could with an eye on potential additions to the app in the future. We intend to make improvements as we evaluate player usage, risk, and the developmental load in implementing tech frameworks to support future updates. Learn more about this update on our latest post.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

  • A new chat channel for searching or advertisement of services like raiding, dungeons, or PvP activities has been added: Trade (Services).
    • Developers’ note: The trade channel that’s been in the game for 18 years will continue to exist, but we wanted to add a new channel to direct messages about the request and advertisement of services like raiding, dungeons, or PvP activities. If you’re looking to buy or sell these kind of services, this is the channel for you! If you’re not interested in those, you can leave the channel and avoid the noise, or move it into its own chat tab. We believe that with this new distinction, you’ll be able to keep Trade chat for the traditional buying and selling of items and professions, and not other chatter.

The Auction House Joins the WoW Companion App

Quote from: Blizzard

It’s been some time since the Auction House was available to mobile users, but the time has come for its return. With the 9.2.7 patch, it becomes a part of the WoW Companion App.

A Little History

The Remote Auction House was once a part of the WoW Armory app released in 2011 and retired in 2018. Due to the way this app was built, there were times in which individuals would abuse the architecture of the app, often causing a disruption to the player economy and even, in some cases, causing in-game latency. This was largely due to the number of queries that could flood the auction house resulting in strained servers as they attempted to manage the larger load. While there were ways that we could and often did mitigate the effect, the ongoing negative impact from those who sought to exploit the system outweighed continuing to support ongoing development.

In light of the change in direction, we moved on to the development of the current WoW Companion App, which provides a more secure experience more in line with the types of activities your character takes on when you log in to play the game today.

Framing the App for Modern Times

In our previous Engineer’s Workshop covering the development of the WoW Companion App, we delved into the intricacies of creating a system simultaneously for both mobile and PC platforms. The biggest hurdle in implementing new features was structuring the necessary frameworks to support the feature. Many of these frameworks were written over the 17+ years of history of World of Warcraft during a time when mobile wasn’t a consideration. This leads to additional work to modernize systems to support both a PC and mobile experience.

In addition, data delivery methods and restrictions look different on PC and mobile. While a system may serve the same set of data to both, extra care must be taken to minimize what is sent to mobile to limit what the player needs to download.

For a feature as large as the Auction House, there were and are many additional frameworks that need to be carefully modernized to support both experiences.

Developing for the Now

When looking into the implementation of the Auction House as a part of the WoW Companion App, we had to gauge how much structure we could put in place for the now and what that would mean for the immediate functionality of the Auction House once it was pushed live. To do this, we took time to dig into more of who is using the Auction House and what they are using it for. We identified the various archetypes and what we could deliver to each user group within a reasonable time.

In the end, we determined that we wanted to create something that would still be useful to casual and mid-core players who use the Auction House regularly for more common purchases such as dungeon and raid preparation or looking out for additional items for their collections.

The original Remote Auction House was never meant to be a “go-to” tool for hardcore traders. In many cases, these users were already using other addons or external tools to maximize their trades beyond what the app could provide. Keeping this in mind, the new app update provides a way for players to make purchases, view listings, and more. Due to our desire to provide an Auction House experience in a more immediate timeframe, we have excluded listing items for sale.

What Can You Do?

With the WoW Companion App update, players will be able to:

  • Browse and view current auctions
  • Bid and buyout auctions
  • Search for auctions
  • Add and remove items from your Favorites list
  • View and cancel your listed auctions

What’s Next?

As with the introduction of cross-faction development in the 9.2.5 update, we want to start off slowly. This allows us to assess how players use the app, assess the impact and risk vectors, then introduce more as it makes sense and fits within our development structure.

We hope this new addition to the WoW Companion app enhances your time in Azeroth and look forward to your ensuing feedback.

Hotfixes – 9 August 2022, Phase 5 Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes, Feedback: Dragonriding & Hunters

Last night we got a new set of hotfixes for the live servers which include buffed drops for Cosmic Flux! The Alpha went into phase 5 with a ton of new changes such as Warlocks, 2 new dungeons, Tailoring and Engineering being enabled. Check out the full notes below!

Hotfixes – 9 August 2022

Quote from: Blizzard

AUGUST 9, 2022

Dungeons and Raids

  • Fated Castle Nathria
    • Sludgefist
      • Adjusted the Fated Power cooldowns to better align with their ability cadence.
  • Fated Sanctum of Domination
    • Guardian of the First Ones
      • Adjusted the Fated Power cooldowns to better align with their ability cadence.
    • Kel’Thuzad
      • Fixed an interaction where Protoform Barrier (Fated Power) could erroneously trigger after Kel’Thuzad’s health is depleted.
    • Sylvanas Windrunner
      • Adjusted the Fated Power cooldowns to better align with their ability cadence in Phase 2.
  • Mythic+
    • Shrouded Affix
      • Fixed an issue that could cause Zul’gamux to not cast Blood Siphon if she was moving.

Items and Rewards

  • Increased all Cosmic Flux rewards from PvP, Mythic+, and Raids by 100%.
  • Cosmic Flux will now be mailed to players when left un-looted.
  • Trashmaster’s Mantle received from Mythic+ or the Great Vault can no longer be used to complete the “I Am the Trashmaster” quest.
    • Developers’ note: Players hoping to become the Trashmaster may do so by finding a Trashmaster’s Mantle in Operation: Mechagon on standard Mythic difficulty. Players who have received a Trashmaster’s Mantle from Mythic+ since the start of Season 4 may still use it to complete the quest, but should be aware that the Richly Appointed Drape quest reward will be awarded at item level 78.

Quests

  • Fixed an issue that prevented “Tempting Fate” world quests from appearing.

Season of Mastery

  • Naxxramas
    • Fixed an issue where bonus loot could not be rewarded when defeating a boss using Runes of Fortune.
      • Developers’ note: Raid groups should always receive an extra Set Piece Token, piece of Gear the boss normally drops, or Splinter of Atiesh per stack of Rune of Fortune the raid has active.

Phase 5 Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes

Quote from: Blizzard

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

DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES

  • Ohn’ahran Plains
  • Removed: Thaldraszus

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 Azure Vault
  • Brackenhide Hollow

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.

  • Level 62 Character Template
  • Maximum Level: 65
  • Mechagnomes have been re-enabled.

CLASSES

  • NEW TALENT SYSTEM
    • Switching Talents and Talent Loadouts no longer requires being in a rested area.
      • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, we’ve removed the rested area requirement for changing Talents and Loadouts. Players are now be able to change their talents anywhere out in the world, as long as they’re not in combat. Additionally, previous restrictions such as not being in an Active Mythic+ instance or in a Rated PVP match still apply. In tandem with loosening this requirement, we’re adding a 5 second cast time when players change their existing talents/loadouts to prevent players from immediately swapping between different builds. This cast time does not apply to any new Talent points gained, those can be spent and activated immediately. Please let us know your thoughts on this change.
    • Evoker
      • Racial Abilities
        • Soar – Cooldown reduced to 4 minutes (was 5 minutes).
        • Familiar Skies now reduces Soar’s cooldown by 1 minute on continents that you have fully explored.
      • Class Tree
        • Developers’ notes: We want to add additional utility-focused talent choices to the Evoker class tree to diversify talent builds. With that in mind, some additional control and self-healing options are now available:
        • New Talent – Grovetender’s Gift: Emerald Blossom instantly heals you for 125% spell power when cast.
        • New Talent – Walloping Blow – Wing Buffet and Tail Swipe knock enemies further and daze them, reducing movement speed by 70% for 4 sec.
        • New Talent – Regenerative Magic: – Source of Magic forms a bond with your ally, causing 20% of their healing to also heal you while you are below 50% health.
        • Ancient Flame moved to a new location in the tree, next to Attuned to the Dream.
      • Preservation
        • Developers’ notes: These latest talent changes for Preservation are aimed at improving Temporal Anomaly’s synergy with the rest of the kit, and balancing Bronze-based builds against Green-based ones. We were also unhappy with some talent nodes (Essence Strike and Grove Tender) and replaced them with talents that should encourage a wider variety of spell usage.
        • Life-Giver’s Flame is now a 2 point node, and moved down one slot in the tree.
        • Essence Strike has been removed and replaced by Essence Attunement.
        • New Talent: Essence Attunement – Causes Essence Burst to stack twice.
        • Temporal Anomaly now heals every 2 seconds (was 1 second). Healing doubled to compensate.
        • Convergence has been removed and replaced by Resonating Sphere.
        • New Talent: Resonating Sphere – Causes Temporal Anomaly to apply Echo at 15%/30% Effectiveness (2 point node). Does not apply Echo’s direct heal. Affected by Time Lord to become up to 60% Echo effectiveness.
        • Temporal Disruption now causes Temporal Anomaly to tick twice as fast (was healing for more).
        • Grove Tender has been removed and replaced by Ouroboros.
        • New Talent: Ouroboros – Each person healed by Emerald Blossom increases healing of next Echo by 15%, stacking 15 times.
        • Time Keeper has swapped positions with Time of Need in the talent tree.
    • Hunter
      • Class Changes
        • Survival of the Fittest removed from Tenacity pets.
        • New Tenacity active button – Fortitude of the Bear: Increase the maximum health of you and your pet by 20% for 10 seconds.
      • Class Tree
        • Hunter’s Agility changed from Avoidance to 4/8% Dodge per rank.
        • Thick Hides removed.
        • Fogged Crystal removed.
        • Born to be Wild now works with Survival of the Fittest and is now a 2-rank talent, reducing cooldowns of affected abilities by 10% per rank.
        • Improved Tranquilizing Shot changed to a 1-point node.
        • Survival of the Fittest added to the tree.
        • New Choice node for Survival of the fittest:
          • Reduce the cooldown of Survival of the Fittest by 60 seconds, and increase the duration by 2 seconds.
          • Increase the amount of damage reduction from Survival of the Fittest by 20%.
        • Several talents on the class tree have had their positions adjusted due to Thick Hides and Fogged Crystal being removed, as well as Survival of the Fittest being added.
        • New (NYI) Talent – Sentinel Owl: Call forth a Sentinel Owl to the target location, granting you unhindered vision. Your attacks ignore line of sight against any target in this area. Every 200 Focus spent grants you 1 second of the Sentinel Owl when cast, up to a maximum of 12 seconds.
          • New Choice node for Sentinel Owl:
            • Sentinel’s Perception: Sentinel Owl now also grants unhindered vision to party members when active.
            • Sentinel’s Wisdom: While Sentinel Owl is active, your party gains 5% Leech and 3% Avoidance.
      • Marksmanship
        • Serpenstalker’s Trickery is now a 1 point talent.
        • A large amount of talents in the bottom left of the tree were adjusted to fix dependency problems.
      • Survival
        • Explosive Expert changed to 2/4 second reduction per point.
        • Kill Command for Survival only now has an innate 10% chance to have its cooldown reset.
        • Predator’s Kill Command chance reduced to 15% (was 25%).
        • Fury of the Eagle lowered to 30% crit chance bonus against targets below 20% health.
        • Fury of the Eagle now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
        • Tactical advantage had its tooltip split to a separate number for Wildfire Bomb and Flanking Strike. Wildfire Bomb’s values reduced to 4/8% per point, Flanking Strike values unchanged.
    • Paladin
      • Holy
        • Developers’ note: The Holy Paladin Talent tree is now enabled in this Alpha build. For Dragonflight, we want to give Holy Paladins more options for caster-focused playstyles by bringing back the Power of the Silver Hand passive effect from the Legion Artifact, in addition to the active button Tyr’s Deliverance.
      • Class Talents
        • Afterimage now correctly only triggers on a Word of Glory cast.
        • Incandescence damage increased by 300%.
          • Developers’ note: This talent was extremely under tuned and did not feel rewarding as a point investment in the talent tree.
      • Protection
        • Changed positions of Strength of Conviction, Resolute Defender, Faith’s Armor, and Guardian of Ancient Kings.
        • Added several additional node connections in center section of tree.
        • Faith’s Armor increased to 10% (was 5%).
        • Blessed Hammer now correctly overrides Crusader Strike.
      • Retribution
        • Removed Talents
          • Last Rites
          • Deemed Unworthy
          • Swift Crusader
          • Long Arm of the Law
            • Developer’s note: We recognize that movement is fun and feels good when attached to short cooldown buttons. That said, our goal for Retribution Paladin is to keep their strengths in removing things that hinder their mobility, or to charge into battle on their Divine Steed, not to give them a short duration burst of movement on a very short cooldown.
          • Liadrin’s Fury
        • New Talents
          • Holy Crusader – Increases mastery by 2%.
          • Seal of Wrath – Judgment has a 25% chance to cast again and deal extra Holy damage to its target.
          • Empyrean Endowment – Judgment empowers your next Templar’s Verdict to automatically trigger Divine Storm with 25% more effectiveness. This effect can only occur every 30 seconds.
          • Executioner’s Wrath – Execution Sentence now instead deals 15% of the damage taken from your abilities to the target and nearby enemies within 8 yards.
          • Sanctified Ground – Your Consecration is 15% larger, and you cannot be slowed below 80% of normal movement speed within Consecration. This effect lasts for 2 seconds after leaving Consecration.
          • Sealed Verdict – Your Holy Power spending abilities increase the damage of your next Blade of Justice by 8/16%.
        • Modified Talents
          • Highlord’s Judgment now has 2 ranks and increases Judgment damage by 8/16% per rank.
          • Calm Before the Storm now causes enemies hit by your Divine Storm to take 100% more damage from your Consecration for 8 seconds (was 50%).
          • Inner Power now grants Holy Power every 12 seconds while you are in combat (was 10 seconds).
            • Developers’ note: This is aimed to tune the Holy Power generation overall and to balance against Sanctification.
        • Developer Notes
          • The area before the 1st gate has been restructured in a way that allows players to bypass the talents that they do not want and save a talent point while trying to go down all 3 sides of the tree. Also, the importance of the new talents such as Timely Judgment and Condemned Blade has been heightened so that players consider them more often when creating a build.
          • Zeal and Blade of Wrath have been moved up and put before the 1st gate.
            • Zeal and Blade of Wrath positional changes are aimed to solidify the foundation of Retribution Paladin. The new positioning will allow the players to get these talents in a simpler and more satisfying way for both leveling and end game content.
          • Crusade and Avenging Wrath: Might choice node has been moved up and put before the 2nd gate. This choice node is now located where Execution Sentence was in the previous build.
          • Execution Sentence and its improvement node has been moved down and put after the 2nd gate.
            • The positional changes to Crusade/AW: Might and Execution Sentence are aimed to provide gameplay defining options after the 2nd gate. The change to Execution Sentence will allow new gameplay options and is now heightened with its improvement nodes aimed at both single target and AOE situations.
          • The area after the 2nd gate has been reconstructed in a way that aims to increase build diversity and choice.
      • Known Issues
        • Not all rank upgrades are implemented.
    • Shaman
      • Elemental
        • New Talent – Heat Wave: Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
        • Primal Storm Elemental no longer moves slower than other Elementals after engaging in combat.
        • Earthquake damage reduced by 40%.
          • Developers’ note: This is not intended to be a nerf, but a damage profile adjustment. Earthquake dominates Elemental’s AoE damage profile in Shadowlands. We’ve also added talents in Dragonflight that improve Earthquake’s output such as Unrelenting Calamity, Eye of the Storm, and Mountains Will Fall which would have continued this trend. The goal is to allow for abilities like Chain Lightning, Lightning Rod, Frost Shock (with Electrified Shocks), Flame Shock, and Lava Burst to contribute more towards Elemental’s AoE.
        • Rolling Magma’s Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage now reduces the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.2 seconds/0.5 seconds (was from 0.5 seconds/1 second).
          • Developers’ note: The interactions are with Primordial Wave and Ascendance are intentional, but the cooldown reduction was initially tuned too high.
      • Restoration
        • Cloudburst Totem now converts 30% of stored healing (was 20%) and cooldown increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
          • Developers’ note: With some new talents that interact with Cloudburst Totem like Call of the Elements, Totemic Surge, and Totemic Focus, we feel its effectiveness needs to be decreased. We started with its healing effectiveness initially but after some feedback believe it’s more important for each totem cast to feel meaningful rather than having more uses of the totem.
    • Warlock
      • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, we are unveiling the talent trees of our favorite curse slinging, shadow bolt hurling, demon summoning class: the Warlock. These trees were built to emphasize the strong thematic and rotational gameplay that is already present with each specialization.
      • That said, we are making a few changes to address the pain points we’ve experienced while playing and concerns that have been brought up by the community. You can read more about these changes down below and our thoughts regarding why the change was made.
        • Core Changes
          • Spell Lock in the talent tree
            • With Dragonflight, we’ve removed Spell Lock from Felhunters and Spell Lock is now available for Warlocks to learn themselves. With this change, we are aiming to allow for more pet diversity in content where Felhunters feel required like dungeons and PvP.
          • Dark Soul is not in the talent tree for Dragonflight intentionally. There are a few reasons for this:
            • All Warlock specs have access to a powerful summon cooldown that interacts with the rest of their spells where Dark Soul increases a stat by a large amount. We prefer to keep the interactive spell.
            • With cooldown stacking, a high percentage of overall damage is boiled down to the cooldown window. While this can be useful for bursting, but damage output outside of this window tends to be lackluster.
            • Across the classes there are new active spells which we are both excited about and equally cautious of causing keybinding issues by adding. Finding times to pull back on active spells is something we’re on the lookout for.
          • Shadow Bolt and Incinerate base damage has been increased
            • We’ve increased the damage of Shadow Bolt and Incinerate significantly and lowered modifiers from various talents. Our goal is for these spells to feel more powerful without having to ramp to see benefits from casting it.
          • Shadowflame
            • Shadowflame is returning; however, we don’t want a short-ranged cone spell to be a rotational for a caster, so we’ve removed the damage from the ability.
        • Affliction
          • Vile Taint revamp
            • Vile Taint has been reworked – Unleashes a vile explosion at the target location, dealing X Shadow damage over 10 seconds to 8 enemies within 10 yards and applies Agony and Curse of Exhaustion to them.
            • With this change, we aim to allow Affliction to ramp up faster in dungeon gameplay especially in combination with talents like Agonizing Corruption and Sow the Seeds.
          • Deathbolt is now a base talent
            • Through Deathbolt and its modifying talents we aim to give Affliction an interesting alternative to Malefic Rapture when the situation calls for single target damage.
        • Destruction
          • An Alternative to Havoc
            • We are exploring an alternative to Havoc called Mayhem. It’s a passive that gives your single target spells a chance to deal 60% of its damage to a random nearby target. The goal with this talent is to give a more passive two-target option for players who would like to opt out of Havoc gameplay. For tuning, we intend for active Havoc gameplay to be rewarded over playing with Mayhem.
      • Along with these changes you’ll see both new spells and some old friends returning. Soul Rot and Decimating Bolt will be coming with us from the Shadowlands, Dimensional Rift returns from Legion, and many more.
      • While the core rotations of each specialization will remain familiar, these talents offer new options that will allow you to modify your gameplay and choose what’s important to you.
      • Welcome back to Azeroth, Warlocks. We look forward to hearing tales of the chaos you’ll rain down across the Dragon Isles. Be sure to let us know your thoughts, our Eye of Kilrogg will be actively watching your discussions.
    • Warrior
      • Developers’ note: As the Warrior trees were just recently put on Alpha, we’re still processing the large amount of great feedback being provided, so please keep giving us your thoughts as we’re collecting feedback from a wide variety of sources and it all helps!
      • Even though we’re still processing the feedback we’ve received, we did want to take some time to respond to a few points of feedback:
        • Multi-level stat nodes in the Warrior tree serve as gates that you need to spend into in order to access the classes ultimate abilities. The intention of the Talent system is that there are choices and not that you can obtain every point. Using multipoint nodes is a way to control that, but also to direct the flow of certain specializations towards groups of talents that are likely better for them. However, we’ve been reading your feedback and are endeavoring to make them more interesting and varied where we can.
        • Players have expressed some negativity around buying back components of old abilities. We’re trying to keep this to a minimum where we can in the warrior class, for example Rampage’s full functionality now comes from one talent. However, in some cases these talents are used for teaching new players during the leveling up process to play their class correctly.
        • We also wanted to clarify some concerns Fury players have regarding needing to obtain 4 weapons to perform optimally in the game. Current tuning aside, our expectation and plan is for Titan’s Grip to be the most competitive specialization for those that engage with progression related content of all forms at the highest levels. However, for those looking for a more relaxed playstyle that is less stressful and skill dependent but still competitive then they have that option also.
      • Class Talents
        • New Talent: Concussive Blows – Reduce the cooldown of Pummel by 1.5 seconds and successfully interrupting an enemy increases the damage you deal against them by 5% for 10 seconds. This may only occur once every 30 seconds.
        • Rearranged some talent nodes and created more interweaving paths to try and create more build variety.
        • Removed Die by the Sword from the Class tree and returned it to the Arms tree.
        • Improved Heroic Throw should correctly override Heroic Throw.
        • Reduced ranks of Two-Handed and Dual-Wield Specializations to 1.
      • Arms
        • New Talent: Skull Banner – You throw down a Skull Banner at your feet, empowering your allies. Increases critical strike damage by 20% for party members within 20 yards of the war banner. Lasts 10 seconds. Removed Concussive Blows from the Arms tree.
        • New Talent: Die by the Sword – Increases your parry chance by 100% and reduces all damage you take by 30% for 8 seconds.
        • Changed some pathing to try and make synergy groups clearer.
        • The Aura applied to enemies by Fatality is now named Fatal Mark and now lasts 60 seconds, refreshing by new stacks.
        • Fatal Mark caused by the Fatality talent can no longer critically strike.
        • Cleaned up the tooltip for Exploit the Weakness.
        • Built old ranks of Colossus Smash into Colossus Smash correctly.
        • Built old ranks of Sweeping Strikes into Sweeping Strikes correctly.
        • Reduced ranks of Improved Mortal Strike and Improved Overpower to 1.
        • Updated Icon for Martial Prowess.
      • Fury
        • New Talent: Unbridled Ferocity – Rampage has a 10% chance to grant you Recklessness for 4 seconds.
        • New Talent: Slaughtering Strikes – Raging Blow causes every strike of your next Rampage to deal and additional 10% damage. Stacks up to 5 times.
        • New Talent: Raging Armaments – Raging Blow gains and extra charge.
        • New Talent: Skull Banner – You throw down a Skull Banner at your feet, empowering your allies. Increases critical strike damage by 20% for party members within 20 yards of the war banner. Lasts 10 seconds.
        • Removed Concussive Blows from the Fury tree and moved to the Class tree.
        • Changed some pathing and node positions to try and make synergy groups clearer and add build diversity.
        • Titan’s Grip and Single-Minded Fury is now a choice talent.
        • Moved Rampage closer to the top of the tree.
        • Fixed a dependency issue with Meat Cleaver.
        • Cold Steel, Hot Blood should now generate 4 rage and references this in the tooltip correctly.
        • Bloodcraze’s Aura tooltip should now display the correct values.
        • Improved Rampage is now built into Rampage.
        • Reduced ranks of Improved Bloodthirst and Improved Raging Blow to 1.

PROFESSIONS

  • User Interface
    • The recipe panel has been updated for better ease of use and clarity:
      • Unlearned & pre-Dragonflight recipes are now found via filters.
        • Favorite recipes are unchanged and are expansion agnostic, so you’ll always see them even if the expansion is not filtered.
      • Recipe skill up chance is now represented through icons instead of recipe name text color. This change is more in-line with the new Recipe frame design while being more accessible to individuals with color vision deficiency.
      • Unlearned recipe names now show a gray color instead of a white color.
      • Recrafting Equipment has its own dedicated section in the recipe panel.
        • Please note that for this Alpha build, Recrafting is not yet implemented.
  • Gathering Nodes
    • In this Alpha build, players might notice that there are a large amount of mining & herbalism nodes spawned in the Ohn’ahran Plains. While we’re eager for feedback on how these feel, we’re still in the process of setting up the Mining & Herbalism professions and players will not be able to gather these nodes until the Professions have been enabled. In the meantime, please let us know if there are any nodes in unusual positions and are not easily accessed!
  • Engineering
    • In this Alpha build, Engineering has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. There are a few new concepts that we’re exploring for Engineering in Dragonflight:
      • Engineers are able to craft Wrists for each Armor type, which can be socketed with different Tinkers that have a variety of on-use effects (such as temporary invisibility or summoning an Alarm-O-Turret).
      • We’ve added a combat resurrection consumable for non-engineers: the Convincingly Realistic Jumper Cables. These are weaker versions of the engineering variant, the Reusable Jumper Cables, and we’re very interested in hearing feedback on how they play out over the course of Alpha.
      • Various Safety Components can be used as Optional Reagents for crafting Engineering items – these Safety Components can reduce the chance of tinker malfunctions or outright prevent catastrophic malfunctions.
      • Speaking of malfunctions, the chance for engineering items to blow up in the users’ face now scale their success chance with Engineering specialization traits and Engineering Skill level. There will be a meaningful difference in success rate between new engineers that have lower skill and specialization traits and engineers that have maximized their knowledge of the profession.
    • In addition to the above, there’s a plethora of new bombs, tinkers and consumables that the Engineering profession can make. Please send us your feedback!
  • Tailoring
    • In this Alpha build, Tailoring has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Tailoring, much like the other armor-crafting Professions, has a plethora of new set & item equip effects and we’re particularly interested in hearing feedback about how these new effects feel. Spellthreads are also making a comeback as leg enchants for Intellect users.
  • 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.
    • Engineering
      • Explosives – Improve in the production of bombs of all types, gaining +1 Skill when crafting bombs per point in this specialization.
        • Short Fuse – Specialize in the creation and use of bombs without safety fuses. Gain +1 Skill when crafting bombs in this specialization.
      • Optimized Efficiency – Specialize in the general precautions and techniques that are invaluable skills for all Engineers. Gain +1 Skill to all engineering crafts per point in this specialization.
        • Scrapper – Specialize in making the most of seemingly useless junk. Gain +5 Multicraft for all Engineering crafts per point in this specialization.
    • Tailoring
      • Draconic Needlework – Source the magic of the Dragon Isles to craft exceptional clothwear with reagents such as Azureweave and Chronocloth, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
        • Azureweave Tailoring – Focus on the Arcane nature of the Blue Dragonflight in your tailoring, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization when making and using Azureweave.
      • Garmentcrafting – Improve at tailoring Cloth Armor to take on the most powerful foes in the Dragon Isles, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
        • Outerwear – Improve at tailoring the major aspects of an outfit, such as Chest and Leg pieces of armor, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specializations.
  • Known Issues
    • Inscription: Draconic Treatises are infinitely consumable, this will be fixed in a future build. They will be single-use items that refresh each weekly reset for a small boost to your Profession Knowledge.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

  • New HUD UI
    • Unit frame art updated
      • Party frame
    • Edit Mode
      • Added Cast Bar
      • Added Minimap
      • Added Encounter Bar

Feedback: Dragonriding

Quote from: Blizzard

Here again with a few updates that went live with this build:

When we introduced turn rate tech, we wanted to make sure the when of a turn mattered. However, we might have been too heavy-handed with those values. Now that we’ve found the outer limits, we’ve re-tuned turn rate to lessen its impact. We continue to iterate on the balance here and welcome your feedback. Please give it a try, in questing, time trials, or both, and share your experience with us.

In addition, we’ve improved the hotbars for dragonriding, allowing players to customize their hotbars through drag-and-drop as normal, much like a druid’s bar when in bear form (or other cool forms). This also resolves some issues like not being able to use abilities to dismount and not being able to interact with quest items while mounted. (If you lose your dragonriding abilities, check your spellbook. Characters from previous alpha builds may not have these skills, but new characters in this build should see them there.)

  • Fixed issues include:
    • Rostrum settings now won’t reset when switching dragons, and “Accept” purchases all selections made.
    • Dragonriding visual effects should no longer persist when getting kicked off a mount.
    • Dragonriding visual effects should no longer display on other players in unexpected situations.
    • Players that aren’t Dracthyr or Demon Hunters can no longer double jump after dismounting a dragonriding mount.
  • New known issues include:
    • Occasionally, a character attempting to progress down the skill track will be unable to take new traits, even though they have enough currency. A relog should solve this in most cases.

Feedback: Hunters

Quote from: Blizzard

Sentinel’s Wisdom is very likely being redesigned.
Hunter’s Agility changing from Avoidance to Dodge was mostly so there wasn’t a doubled-up Avoidance node on the tree.