We got a couple of blue posts last night on the Dragonflight Beta forums and it looks like we’re heading into the next phase of testing! They are overall satisfied with the state of the Talent trees coming to the servers in the next Beta build and will now be focused on tuning. Additionally raid testing will start next week! All bosses except the last boss will be tested in the next 3 weeks.
Other than that they also announced the Preservation (Healing) Evoker spells will be getting a range increase to 30 yards instead of 25.
On the Shadowlands side of things we got a small hotfix for Solo Shuffle.
Dragonflight Class Design Progress
We feel it would be useful to let everyone know where we are in the development of Dragonflight classes and talent design. With the next Beta/PTR build, we’re transitioning away from spending the majority of our time on the design iteration of the new talent trees, and we’re now primarily focused on fixing bugs and tuning the game. This includes balancing talent choices against each other and tuning the throughput of each class. We want to ensure that we release an expansion of the highest quality for this incredible community.
That being said, the new talent systems constitute a tremendous change to the game and represent a fundamental overhaul to how classes and specializations are customized by players. It is our expectation that we will be making adjustments based on your feedback throughout the expansion’s lifetime. We greatly appreciate all of your testing and feedback thus far, and we’re looking forward to delivering improvements to all of the talent trees in content updates throughout Dragonflight.
Vault of the Incarnates Raid Testing Schedule
The raid testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. There’s the possibility of having to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc.
We’ll be updating this schedule with boss details as we get closer to their testing dates. Keep an eye on the Dragonflight Beta forum for the boss feedback threads and the latest information. Thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.
Vault of the Incarnates Raid Testing Schedule
The final boss of Vault of the Incarnates, Raszageth the Storm-Eater, will not be available for testing.
Thursday, September 29
- Heroic
- Eranog – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
- Terros – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
Friday, September 30
- Heroic
- Broodkeeper Diurna – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
- Dathea, Ascended – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
- Kurog Grimtotem – 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
- Normal
- Start – 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)
- End – Monday, October 3 at 09:00 PDT (12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST)
Friday, October 7
- Heroic
- Boss TBD – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
- Boss TBD – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
- Mythic
- Boss TBD – 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
- Raid Finder
- The Primal Bulwark: Eranog, The Primal Council, Dathea, Ascended
- Start – 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)
- End – Monday, October 10 at 09:00 PDT (12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST).
Thursday, October 13
- Mythic
- Boss TBD – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
- Boss TBD – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
- Boss TBD – 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
Friday, October 14
- Mythic
- Boss TBD – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
- Boss TBD – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
- Boss TBD – 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
- Raid Finder
- Caverns of Infusion – Terros, Sennarth, Kurog Grimtotem
- Start – 16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)
- End – Monday, October 17 at 09:00 PDT (12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST).
Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: In Valdrakken, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade V in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)
Q: What character should I use to test the raid?
A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 70 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.
Q: How long does testing last?
A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.
Q: How do I report feedback or bugs?
A: We’ll be posting encounter feedback threads each week prior to the start of the raid tests. Additionally, you can also submit your feedback through the in-game Issue Reporter tool.
Feedback: Evokers
In the next beta build, we are making some updates to address concerns regarding Preservation Evoker’s healing range. We have been reading feedback and observing playtests, and agree that the 25 yard range is a little too prohibitive when combined with the frequent casting requirements of empower spells. To address this, we’re doing the following:
- All of Preservation Evoker’s healing and utility spells will now be at 30 yards baseline.
- The cooldowns for Dream Breath and Spiritbloom are being increased slightly, with Preservation’s overall healing efficacy being increased to compensate.
- This should mean you have to stand still and cast empower spells less often, but when you do they will be more impactful, and your healing in-between those moments will also be more impactful.
- Hover will now have a shorter lock-out time, so you can more quickly cast spells after using Hover.
We are interested in delivering on a mobile, mid-range healer. We want to make sure tools like Hover, Verdant Embrace, Echo, and Rescue are flexible and powerful enough to compensate for a lower range. Please continue testing and providing feedback, and let us know if these tools are working well alongside the changes above. We will continue to listen to feedback and make sure Evoker is a powerful and exciting new class to play!
Will Living Flame for Preservation have a 30 yard healing range, and a 25 yard damage range?
Living Flame’s range will be 30 yds for both the damage and healing effect, for Preservation.
Will Devastation also see a 30 yard range for its shared healing and utility spells, or will those remain at 25 yards?
All of Devastation’s spells, including Living Flame, will remain at 25 yd range (ones that are already higher, like Deep Breath and Time Spiral, are not changing). Raid frames will be updated for both specializations to show allies as out-of-range based on their primary range – frames will dim for Devastation when allies are more than 25 yds away, and they will dim for Preservation when allies are more than 30 yds away.
On a related note, the change to Hover’s lock-out time does apply to Devastation.
Empowered spells are not affected by haste. Is there a reason for this?
It is a bug that empower spells’ tooltips do not update their cast time to reflect haste. We’ve verified internally that empower spells are charging faster with haste, as intended.
Is there any consideration for letting us Hover mid-cast, and/or Hover cast Empowered spells?
We are not planning to make Hover castable while casting at this time, for a few reasons. Philosophically, activating an ability is a decision that should have some cost. Costs are an important part of what allow an ability to be both powerful & balanced. Costs also add depth, and the potential for skill growth: A player who has learned an encounter, or correctly identifies that an engagement is imminent in PvP, can plan when to activate Hover without disrupting their own spell flow, and thereby express mastery.
On the technical side, Hover requires you to be inputting a direction in order to determine which way your character dashes. Even if it were castable while casting, if a player wanted to dash sideways during Disintegrate, the game requires that they input a strafe command before casting Hover, and that movement input would cancel Disintegrate. Hover can be cast “in place” without causing a dash, but we feel that the disconnect there (being able to Hover-in-place, but not dash-Hover, while casting) is an unintuitive middle ground that would be frustrating for many.
Hotfixes: September 23, 2022
September 23, 2022
Player versus Player
- Solo Shuffle
- Resolved an issue that could allow players to gain mana regeneration from food summoned by Mages.
Wrath of the Lich King Classic
- Raids will now count towards the 5 instance-per-hour limit.
- Developers’ notes: The hourly instance limit prevents players from entering instances that they’ve entered at least once already within the last hour. With this change, farming a dungeon should not prevent you from entering a raid instance, so long as you don’t attempt to reset and re-enter that raid instance multiple times.