DF Beta: Class & Tier Set Tuning, Mythic+ Season 1 Gear Reward Plans & Testing

Based on various data points, including recent Beta raid testing, we’re making tuning adjustments to a number of classes. In addition to new and returning abilities, the new talent trees allow players to choose abilities that were previously exclusive to one another in the talent row system. In many cases, we need to adjust the impact of these abilities to hit our throughput targets for Dragonflight.

The following are being applied to the Dragonflight Beta and PTR via hotfix, before raid testing in the Beta gets underway this evening.

Demon Hunter

• Soul Rending – Metamorphosis leech bonus reduced to 5/10% (was 10/20%).
• Havoc
  • Metamorphosis duration reduced to 24 seconds (was 25 seconds).
  • Improved Chaos Strike bonus Chaos Strike damage reduced to 10% (was 15%).
  • Improved Fel Rush bonus Fel Rush damage reduced to 20% (was 25%).
  • Initiative bonus critical strike chance reduced to 12% (was 15%).
  • Momentum bonus damage reduced to 8% (was 10%).
  • Essence Break bonus to Chaos Strike/Blade Dance damage reduced to 80% (was 100%).
  • Furious Gaze duration reduced to 10 seconds (was 12 seconds).
  • Shattered Destiny fury spent per CDR increased to 8 (was 7).
  • Dancing with Fate bonus to Blade Dance final slash damage reduced to 20/40% (was 25/50%).
  • Growing Inferno bonus per tick Immolation Aura damage reduced to 5/10% (was 8/15%).
  • Burning Wound damage over time effect reduced by 20%.
  • Burning Wound bonus Immolation Aura damage increased to 50% (was 45%).
  • Burning Wound – fixed a bug that was causing Immolation Aura damage bonus to be applied twice.
  • Ragefire – portion of damage saved per crit reduced to 40% (was 50%).

Druid

• Balance
  • Orbit Breaker triggers every 30th Shooting Star (was every 20th).
  • Astral Communion generates 60 Astral Power (was 75).
  • Primordial Arcanic Pulsar triggers after spending 600 Astral Power (was 300).
  • Sundered Firmament creates a Fury of Elune at 20% effectiveness (was 25%).
  • Elune’s Guidance reduces the Astral Power cost of Starsurge by 5 (was 10) and the Astral Power cost of Starfall by 8 (was 15).
  • Rattle the Stars reduces the cost of Starfall and Starsurge by 5% per stack (was 10%).
  • Starsurge costs 40 Astral Power (was 30). Damage reduced by 35%.
  • Starfall damage reduced by 35%.
  • Shooting Stars generates 2 Astral Power (was 3). Damage reduced by 50%.

Paladin

• Greater Judgement – Judgement now causes the target to take 20% increased damage from your next Holy Power ability (was 25%).
• Seal of Crusader increases Holy Damage taken by 3/6% (was 5/10%).
• Divine Purpose increases the damage of your next holy damage spender by 15% (was 20%).
• Zealot’s Paragon extension reduced to 0.5 seconds (was 1 second).
• Retribution
  • Templar’s Verdict damage reduced by 35%.
  • Final Verdict damage reduced by 35%
  • Zeal – Judgment now causes your next 2 auto attacks to occur 30% faster (was your next 3).
  • Ashes to Dust now 20% chance to reset Wake of Ashes instead of Blade of Justice (was 35%).
  • Execution Sentence deals 10% of damage done (was 20%).
  • Templar’s Vindication changed to a 15% chance of a 10/20% Templar’s Verdict (was 15/30% chance of a 15/30% Templar’s Verdict).
  • Divine Storm damage reduced by 35%.
• Protection
  • Light of the Titans healing reduced by 25%.

Rogue

• Alacrity now grants 1% haste per stack, up to 5 stacks (was 2%, to 4 stacks).
• Thistle Tea – total bonus Mastery granted reduced by 20%.
• Find Weakness armor ignore value reduced to 15/30% (was 20/40%).
• Assassination
  • All ability damage reduced by 34%.
  • Rupture damage increased by 22%.
  • Venomous Wounds Energy restore reduced to 5 (was 7).
  • Improved Poisons bonus poison chance reduced to 5/10% (was 10/20%).
  • Venom Rush Energy restore reduced to 5 (was 8).
  • Vicious Venoms additional Nature damage values restored to 10/20% (was unintentionally 15/20%).
  • Systemic Failure bonus damage reduced to 20% (was 30%).
  • Twist the Knife bonus duration reduced to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds).
  • Doomblade additional Bleed damage reduced to 20% (was 30%).
  • Deathmark damage increased by 227%.
  • Tiny Toxic Blade bonus damage increased to 500% (was 300%).
  • Poison Bomb damage increased by 200%.
  • Sepsis damage increased by 60%.
  • Kingsbane damage increased by 50%.
• Outlaw
  • All ability damage reduced by ~14.5%.
  • Opportunity strike chance reduced to 30% (was 35%).
  • Weaponmaster bonus strike chance reduced to 5% (was 10%).
  • Combat Potency Energy regeneration reduced to 20% (was 30%).
  • Swift Slasher bonus attack speed per combo point reduced to 2% (was 3%).
  • Fatal Flourish chance to restore energy reduced to 60% (was 75%).
  • Quick Draw bonus Pistol Shot damage reduced to 20% (was 50%).
  • Summarily Dispatched duration reduced to 8/15 seconds (was 10/20 seconds).
  • Greenskin’s Wickers bonus Pistol Shot damage reduced to 200% (was 300%).
• Subtlety
  • All ability damage reduced by 17%.

We’ll be making a number of tuning and functional changes to Class Set bonuses in the next beta build. These changes are influenced both by your responses and feedback, and by our goals for their tuning and complexity level. These changes make some of the narrower bonuses valuable in a wider variety of content and smooth out the benefits of others that could vary a lot in value based on talent choices.

Druid

• Balance
  • (2) Set Bonus: Damage bonus to Wrath or Starfire changed to 20% per stack (was 50%).
  • (4) Set Bonus: Damage bonus to Starsurge or Starfall changed to 35% (was 50%).
• Feral
  • (2) Set Bonus Ferocious Bite and Rip damage bonus increased to 6% (was 5%).
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: For each combo point spent, finishing moves increase your Rip, Rake, and Thrash damage by 2% and increase the chance for Shred, Rake, Swipe / Brutal Slash, and Thrash to Critically Strike by 2% for 4 seconds.
    • Developers’ note: Changing the (4) Set Bonus to a more targeted effect. A lot of the value of the previous version was getting successive Ferocious Bites during Convoke & Berserk. This version puts passive power into your bleeds and adds more crit to your builders to generate more combo points at all times.
• Guardian
  • NEW (2) Set Bonus: Using Mangle with Gore also deals 30% of damage dealt to nearby enemies, damage reduced beyond 5 targets. It also increases your damage done and reduces damage you take by 5% for 6 seconds.
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Gore has a 5% increased chance to trigger. Using Mangle with Gore heals you for {0.5*AP} health over 6 seconds.
    • Developers’ note: The previous version was low in power compared to other tank bonuses. This design make Mangle with Gore procs give consistent durability and damage, and gives Mangle an AOE component so it’s worth hitting over Swipe in AOE to maintain the buff.
• Restoration
  • (4) Set Bonus Lifebloom power proc can now only proc once from each tick of Efflorescence, instead of once for each critically healed target. Increase to Lifebloom healing changed to 5% per stack (was 10%).

Hunter

• Beast Mastery
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Barbed Shot damage increased by 5% and Barbed Shot increases damage of your next Kill Command by 20%.
    • Developers’ note: We heard you that focus was not a valuable reward in all scenarios so we changed this bonus to grant more damage to the abilities enhanced by the (2) Set Bonus.
• Marksmanship
  • UPDATE (2) Set Bonus: Arcane Shot & Multi Shot critical hits cause your next Aimed Shot to cause targets hit to bleed for 40% of damage dealt over 6 seconds.
    • (2) Set Bonus no longer reduces the casting time of Aimed Shot and bleed effect increased to 40% of Aimed Shot damage (was 20%).
    • (4) Set Bonus increase chance for ranged auto-attacks to trigger effect to 15% (was 10%).
    • Developers’ note: We removed the Aimed Shot cast time reduction from the (2) Set Bonus because Aimed Shots were becoming uncomfortably short during Trueshot.
• Survival
  • (2) Set Bonus damage bonus increased to 15% (was 10%).
  • UPDATE (4) Set Bonus: Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite, Carve, and Butchery have a 20% chance to make your next Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite, Carve, or Butchery cost no Focus and deal 50% increased damage.
    • (4) Set Bonus chance to make Raptor Strike / Mongoose Bite, Carve, or Butchery cost no Focus increased to 20% (was 10%) and free abilities now also deal 50% increased damage.

Monk

• Mistweaver
  • Fixed an issue preventing Mistweaver’s 4-piece bonus from working with the Essence Font heal applied by Faeline Stomp.
• Windwalker
  • UPDATE (4) Set Bonus: Fists of Fury now instead enhances your next 3 Rising Sun Kicks or Spinning Crane Kicks and enhanced kicks increase damage your next Fists of Fury deals by 5%, stacking up to 3 times.
    • (4) Set Bonus now only increases the damage of Fists of Fury by 5% for each stack, instead of granting Versatility during Fists of Fury for each stack.
    • Developers’ note: We decided that flat damage was more appropriate for a DPS class bonus than Versatility.

Paladin

• Holy
  • NEW (2) Set Bonus: Holy Shock increases the critical strike chance of your spells by 4% for 10 seconds.
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Holy Light, Flash of Light, Light of Dawn, and Bestow Faith healing is increased by 6% and their critical effects increase the damage or healing of your next Holy Shock by 20%.
    • Developers’ note: The Holy Class Set was more rotationally impactful than we like. We replaced the (2) Set Bonus with an easily maintained buff to your healing. For the (4) Set Bonus, we added some passive healing bonuses to give consistent value and removed the ability for Holy Shock to trigger enhancements to itself.
• Protection
  • (2) Set Bonus: Versatility buff increased to 5% for 10 sec (up from 4% for 4 sec).
• Retribution
  • NEW (2) Set Bonus: Judgment, Blade of Justice, and Wake of Ashes damage increased by 15%.
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Templar’s Verdict / Final Verdict and Divine Storm damage increased by 10%.
    • Developers’ note: We heard you that the previous class set was going to impact your rotational decisions negatively and that it had limited value in AOE. The new (2) Set Bonus empowers your strongest Holy Power generators and the (4) Set Bonus boosts your big damage spenders.

Priest

• Discipline
  • (4) Set Bonus: Amount that Penance empowers Power Word: Shield reduced to 60% of its damage or 18% of its healing (was 100% / 30%).
• Holy
  • (4) Set Bonus: Bonus changed to 10% critical strike for 6 seconds (was 15% for 8 seconds).
• Shadow
  • (2) Set Bonus: Damage buff reduced to 12% per stack (was 20%).
  • (4) Set Bonus: Bonus reduced to 4% Haste (was 5%).

Shaman

• Elemental
  • 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses now work with Elemental Blast if taken.
  • (2) Set Bonus: Now increases the damage of your next Earth Shock / Elemental Blast or Earthquake by 5%, stacking 5 times (was 2.5% stacking 10 times).
  • (4) Set Bonus: Increases your Mastery by 8% for 5 seconds (was 10% for 10 seconds).
  • Fixed a bug cause the 2-piece bonus to activate from every hit of Chain Lightning. Now activates once per cast.
• Enhancement
  • UPDATE (2) Set Bonus: Stormstrike increases the damage of your next Fire, Frost, or Nature ability by 10% and causes it to generate 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon.
    • Now affects all Fire, Frost, and Nature direct damage abilities, Flame Shock excluded.
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Consuming Maelstrom Weapon stacks increases your Haste by 1% for each stack consumed for 4 seconds.
    • Developers’ note: We heard your feedback that the (2) Set Bonus only affecting Lava Lash impacted your talent decisions, so we broadened it to affect whatever you want to use. Flame Shock is not affected because its direct damage component is very low and we don’t want players to have to track variations in its damage over time. The (4) Set Bonus bonus granted cooldown reduction, which often isn’t valuable, so we replaced it with a consistent bonus that still rewards generating Maelstrom Weapon stacks.
• Restoration
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Your critical heals have 215% effectiveness instead of the usual 200%.
    • Developers’ note: The previous (4) Set Bonus was providing an enhancement during a time you were doing less healing and had variable uptime depending on talent choices. We replaced it with a consistent throughput bonus that is enhanced by the (2) Set Bonus.

Warlock

• Destruction
  • NEW (4) Set Bonus: Your critical strikes deal 208% damage instead of the usual 200%.
    • Developers’ note: We agree the previous (4) Set Bonus had too much randomness and limited value for AOE abilities. We replaced it with a consistent critical damage bonus that’ll enhance your Chaos Bolts and combo with the critical strike chance from the (2) Set Bonus.

Warrior

• Protection
  • Ignore Pain granted changed to 5% of damage dealt (was 10%).

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts here! Feedback like this is valuable, and helps inform discussion within the team as we continue to iterate on systems like Mythic+.

While I don’t have information to share about this specific suggestion today, I do want to take this opportunity to offer some insight into changes coming to Mythic+ in Dragonflight and our thought process behind them, as well as open up a discussion around elements that are still being worked on or could change in the future.

First up, we’d like to provide some more context for a change you may have already heard about.

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Seasonal Dungeon Rotation

If you’ve done Mythic+ over multiple seasons, you may have had the experience of running a particular dungeon over and over chasing a prized item, only to be faced with chasing that same item in that same dungeon the following season as well. That’s not great, and we want to do something about it.

Perhaps the biggest change coming in Dragonflight is that we’ll be rotating the entire set of Mythic+ dungeons every season. We believe this will result in a better overall experience by:

• Providing primary Mythic+ players with more of the sense of exploration and progression each season that Raiders get to enjoy with new raids.

Much of the fun of Mythic+ comes from seeing yourself get better and better at playing a dungeon through experience, but opportunities to learn and improve become more scarce the longer a dungeon stays active in the pool.

• Keeping the level of effort required to get the best rewards consistent season over season.

Learning a new raid can be fun and challenging, but the relative ease of completing Mythic+ dungeons that everyone mastered last season can create heavy social pressure to spend time in Mythic+ gearing up even if it’s not your preferred activity.

• Creating space for returning players to jump into Mythic+ even if they missed the previous season.

Imagine taking a break during Season 1 and coming back in Season 2, only to join a Mythic+ group and feel like you’re holding them back because everyone else just “knows” a strategy you never had the chance to learn. With dungeons rotating every season, everyone gets to start on a relatively even playing field and figure out new strategies together.

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Seasonal Affixes

These have been a staple of Mythic+ for years now, but what purpose do they serve and why do we keep making them?

Seasonal affixes:

• Play a key role in shaking up gameplay. We’re asking you to play the same dungeons for well over a year, and adding new twists helps keep them feeling fresh.
• Give us an opportunity to add thematic flavor and give each season a sense of identity. It’s cool to have N’Zoth or Denathrius influencing Mythic+ dungeons at the same time they’re featured in the raid.
• Are a great place to experiment and try new ideas. We can keep things that work well for future seasons, while safely leaving behind things that didn’t work as well.

But as great as Seasonal affixes have been, they also have limitations. With their relatively high complexity and strong seasonal ties, they’re mostly lost to history once a season is over. While they do have experimental value, they don’t contribute as much long-term benefit to Mythic+ as we’d like.

A side-effect of the Dungeon Rotation change above is that it takes pressure off the Seasonal affix to be the “big thing” that transforms your gameplay in a new season, and this has given us space to really think about what a Seasonal affix might look like going forward. Should we try to make Seasonals that can become regular affixes in future seasons? Should we stop doing them in favor of something else entirely? There are lots of interesting questions to consider as we move forward.

On Beta realms you’ll soon be seeing an experimental version of a Season affix named “Thundering”. We’re still iterating heavily and it’s likely the functionality will change, but it should give a sense of the level of complexity we’d like Seasonal affixes to occupy in Dragonflight. Since you’ll already be learning a whole new set of dungeons, the Seasonal affix can be less complicated and focus more on being about thematic flavor (as well as giving us space to try new things).

Another shift that you’ll likely notice is a reduction in the amount of “borrowed power” provided by Seasonal affixes. While feedback on beneficial affix effects has been positive and it’s a space we definitely want to continue exploring, we hit a level of power in Shadowlands that felt extreme and contributed heavily to the short-circuiting effect described above.

We’ll be keeping a close eye both on how this feels in playtests and on player feedback, and may try other directions if it doesn’t work out as well as we’d like. For example, there’s a world where we have beneficial effects closer to Shadowlands, but also make enemies more powerful to offset that extra power. The key takeaway here is that we want to continue experimenting with Mythic+, and we hope you’ll appreciate seeing a bigger difference in your experience with each season in Dragonflight.

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Rewarding Dedicated Mythic+ Players

Throughout Shadowlands, we’ve observed a trend where players who’ve mastered a set of Mythic+ dungeons are seeing their sense of progression short-circuited in subsequent seasons.

This is a complex problem that intersects with several of the topics outlined above, but the bottom line is that something valuable is lost when the best gear you can get from Mythic+ isn’t necessarily something you earn by investing time and effort into getting really good at Mythic+.

To be extremely clear, this does not mean we want to make Mythic+ less rewarding. It’s a major pillar of the endgame for World of Warcraft and players who want to focus on it should have access to competitive rewards.

What it does mean is that we want Mythic+ to have more of a sense of progression as you push higher and higher keys, and we want the gear you get to feel like a reflection of that. To achieve this goal, we’re making two big changes:

• First, starting with Keystone level 11, we’re increasing the rate at which enemies gain health and damage with each subsequent key level from 8% to 10%.

The impact from this change isn’t dramatic at any given key level, but it should contribute to giving each step up more of a sense of progression and make it easier for us to step up rewards accordingly.

• Second, we’re adjusting the item level of gear rewards both from end of run chests and from the great vault, and scaling their item level growth up to Keystone level 20.

We’re also introducing an additional Valor upgrade tier, which will increase the maximum item level of Valor upgrades that players can unlock with higher Mythic+ ratings. You can review the chart below for details.

Mythic+ Item Rewards:

Valor Upgrade Tiers:

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Shorter Affix Rotation

The last experimental change we’d like to talk about today is placing a couple of our regular affixes on hiatus and reducing the number of weeks in the affix rotation.

In Dragonflight Season 1, the Inspiring and Necrotic affixes will be taking a break, and the affix rotation will be reduced from 12 weeks to 10 weeks. Our thought process here is that:

• Inspiring is a good affix for changing up your gameplay when you have thorough knowledge of a dungeon, but it can feel especially punishing while you’re still learning. This didn’t feel like a good fit with the increased emphasis on learning dungeons each season going forward.
• Necrotic was originally intended to be an affix that challenges tanks, but it’s become increasingly apparent that routing responsibilities already place tremendous pressure on tank players in Mythic+, so we’d like to try giving this affix a vacation.
• With a shorter affix rotation overall, we’re hopeful that we can reduce the perceived disparity in difficulty between weeks and allow players to more regularly feel like they can make meaningful progress toward increasing their Mythic+ rating.

We’re excited to see how this plays out, and looking forward to trying out further changes in Season 2 and beyond. While it’s too early to make promises, this may include things like swapping out more affixes, changing the level at which different affix types become active, or perhaps even trying out a new affix category entirely.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your feedback, and I hope the information shared here is able to provide good context for further discussion! =)

Greetings!

While development for Dragonflight Mythic+ is still ongoing, we wanted to give players a look at our progress and are currently planning a limited Mythic+ test this weekend.

The test period will begin Friday Oct 7th at 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST), and end Monday October 10th at 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST). During this time, you’ll be able to test two dungeons on Mythic+ (Ruby Life Pools and The Azure Vault), along with a prototype Seasonal affix tentatively named “Thundering”. Note that this affix is still undergoing iteration and may change considerably from week to week.

During the test period you’ll be able to acquire and customize Mythic Keystones by talking to the Keystone Vendor in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

And if you’d like more information about the changes coming with Dragonflight Mythic+, you can check out this post on the Community Council forums which contains details about difficulty and reward changes, thoughts on Seasonal affixes, and more!

Quick answers to these questions:

• Mythic+ testing will be available on all Beta servers for this round
• There is a Dungeon Teleporter who will appear near the Keystone Vendor
• We ran into an issue deploying a hotfix needed to make the Keystone Vendor available, and are working to address the issue ASAP. We’ll post a server message as soon as testing opens up. Apologies for the delay!