Hotfixes – 2 August, Dragonflight Alpha Development Notes, Feedback: Shaman

AUGUST 2, 2022

Covenants

• Kyrian
  • Fixed an issue that allowed Effusive Anima Accelerator’s (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos Soulbind) explosion to strike enemies that were not within line of sight of its point of impact, causing players to unintentionally engage enemies through floors and walls.

Dungeons and Raids

• Fated Raids
  • Fated Castle Nathria
    • Fixed an issue where Raid Finder difficulty was erroneously granting enemies less stats than intended.
  • Fated Powers
    • Reconfiguration Emitter now shows an additional visual effect while immune to damage before the first interrupt to improve its clarity.
• Mythic+
  • Operation: Mechagon – Workshop
    • King Mechagon
      • Magneto-Arm now scales with the Tyrannical affix instead of the Fortified affix.

Items and Rewards

• Fixed an issue where Mountebank’s Colorful Cloak dropped at the incorrect item level.

Player versus Player

• The Hyperthread Wristwraps effect has been disabled in Rated Battlegrounds or Arenas.

Quests

• [NA Realms] Fixed an issue preventing players from receiving credit towards the quest “Crossing Fate.”
  • Developers’ note: We’re working on a fix that will accurately reflect the progress that was made for those affected by the bug. We’ll update the Hotfixes once that fix has been deployed.

Take a look at this week’s updates to Dragonflight Alpha:

DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES

• Thaldraszus
• Removed: The Waking Shores

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 68 Character Template
• Maximum Level: 70
• Dwarves have been re-enabled.

CLASSES

• NEW TALENT SYSTEM
  • Warrior
    • Developer’s note: We feel that all three Warrior specializations have excellent foundations for both their class fantasies and with regard to how fun their rotations are to play. So, our goal for the class in Dragonflight has been to evolve and enhance each specialization rather than to revolutionize or rebuild them.
      We’re trying to strike a balance between existing things you know and love, exciting new talents and greatest hits from that past such as Blood and Thunder, Odyn’s Fury and Cold Steel, Hot Blood.
      With this in mind, players should expect core rotations to feel comfortable and familiar but with a much wider variety of choice in terms of which elements they can enhance. In addition to this we’re also attempting to build in support to enable players to experiment with more varied playstyles if they desire, such as the Arms being able to heavily investing in damage over time abilities and Fury being able to double down on auto attacks.
      We are excited for Warriors to be joining the Dragonflight Alpha look forward to hearing your feedback!
    • Known Issues
      • Some talent overrides are not working correctly, and you are able to use both spells (E.G. Annihilator doesn’t replace Raging Blow).
      • Some talent dependencies and combinations are not working correctly. (E.G. Combining Titanic Throw and Improved Heroic Throw doesn’t apply Deep Wounds to all affected targets)
      • Stances are currently a work in progress and undergoing internal iteration. A large part of their goal is to guide the fantasy of each spec but mechanically, the goal for these is not to encourage frantic stance shifting. But rather switching at certain major points in an encounter, such as For DPS Warriors during a painful AOE damage phase, or for Protection Warrior that are off tanking they may temporarily switch to deal more damage.
      • A handful of talents will be getting a choice-node option in a later Alpha build (E.G. Rumbling Earth and Thunderous Aftershocks).
      • Fury has some issues with Execute related to the new player experience that causes you to have both the Arms and Fury versions of Execute (players should use the variant that attacks with both Weapons).
      • Multi Rank nodes are not always awarding full values.
      • We’re still working on the background art for the Fury talent tree, it will be added in a later build.

PROFESSIONS

• Inscription
  • Developer’s note: In this Alpha build, Inscription has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. In addition to the traditional Inscription recipes, we’re introducing a new system to Inscription: the Darkmoon Deck Box. Scribes that have fully unlocked the Darkmoon Mysteries specialization tree will be able to make Darkmoon Booster Packs that contain the cards necessary to create traditional Darkmoon Decks much like before. However, Scribes can now use these Darkmoon Decks to craft Darkmoon Deck Boxes, which are higher item level and are able to be inscribed with Scale Sigils that allow them to customize their Darkmoon Deck Box with different attributes, such as removing all Even cards from the deck, shuffling faster or only shuffling when the player jumps. We’re very interested in feedback on this new system, so please let us know how it feels once you’re able to playtest with it!
    Please note that for Alpha purposes, the Darkmoon Ace cards can be bought from Reagent Lord Herbataur. The other remaining cards will need to be crafted by Scribes.
• Skinning
  • Developer’s note: In this Alpha build, Skinning has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. While the core gameplay of Skinning remains largely unchanged for Dragonflight, we are adding a new consumable that aims to give Skinners a new form of gameplay: Creature Baits. Skinners will be able to create and place Creature Baits to lure elusive creatures out of hiding.
    Please note that for Alpha purposes, the cooldown on Creature Baits has been removed so that players can use the item and give feedback. These items will have a medium length cooldown in their final version, which can be reduced by Bait Crafter Specialization traits.
• 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:
  • Inscription
    • Archiving — Improve at the art of archiving various texts, gaining + 1 Skill per point in this specialization.
      • Darkmoon Mysteries — Improve at understanding the complex mysteries behind Darkmoon Cards, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
    • Rune Mastery — Improve at the art of Inscription and utilizing various reagents, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
      • Understanding Flora — Improve at milling various herbs in the Dragon Islands, gaining +1 Resourcefulness per point in this specialization.
  • Skinning
    • Bait Crafter — Improve your skinning efficiency, gaining +1 Finesse while skinning in the Dragon Isles per point in the Specialization.
      • Elemental Infusion — Hone your eye for detail, gaining +1 Perception while skinning in the Dragon Isles per point in the Specialization.
    • Tanning — Improve your capabilities at gathering general materials from creatures, gaining +1 Skill while skinning in the Dragon Isles per point in the Specialization.
      • Leather Mastery — Bolster your knowledge of leather skinning, gaining +1 Skill while skinning leather creatures in the Dragon Isles per point in the Specialization.
  • Known Issues
    • Leatherworking: Feral Hide Drums cannot be crafted. This will be fixed in a later build.
    • Skinning: A few of the Specialization trees are missing description text. This will be fixed in a later build.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• New HUD UI
  • Edit Mode
    • Added Pet Bar
    • Added Possess Bar
• Equipment sets, guild bank, and macro icon selection can now be chosen with a drag and drop from certain sources (items, spells, mounts, battle pets, macros).
  • Known issue: Macros do not display their spell icon when the question mark icon is used.

Hello again, Shamans!

In today’s new build of the Dragonflight Alpha, we have several adjustments to talents in the Shaman Class Tree intended to reduce the overall defensive and mobility kit of Shaman, which has crept up due to the new system allowing for previously impossible combinations. We’re happy with new talent combinations, but the mobility and defensive power in the tree exceeded our target for Shaman, and individual talent power was above budget compared to other classes.

Elemental
We’ve continued to make minor tweaks to the Elemental tree, based on feedback. This week we focused on improvements to Primordial Wave. It’s generally avoided outside of AoE in the current design, so our aim is to improve its overall value in various game modes to increase build diversity.

We attempted to address node pathing pain points for Storm Elemental with Primal Elementalist. There is now a path available towards Primal Elementalist that doesn’t require sinking more than a couple points into talents unrelated to a Lightning-focused build.

Electrified Shocks is an experiment we’re excited about for Icefury in AoE, and we’re continuing to make adjustments to it. We’ve increased the duration of the Icefury buff which should be an overall improvement to its gameplay given the window was previously hard to fit your Frost Shocks in. We’ve also reduced the number of targets hit and increased the duration of the debuff on enemies, as the intent is for there to be weaving gameplay between Chain Lightning and Frost Shock.

Flames of the Firelord is a niche talent, mainly used for PvP or some AoE builds and we felt it best to combine its functionality with Flames of the Cauldron.

Magma Chamber has moved as its generally more versatile than Searing Flames. Its damage bonus has also been increased.

Talent changes for Elemental:

• Flames of the Firelord has been removed, and its effect is now attached to Flames of the Cauldron.
• Flames of the Cauldron now reduces the cooldown of Flame Shock by 1.5 seconds and Flame Shock deals damage 15% faster.
• Icefury buff duration increased to 25 seconds (was 15 seconds).
• Electrified Shocks makes Frost Shock hit 3 additional targets (was 4), and the debuff duration increased to 6 seconds (was 4 seconds).
• Magma Chamber Damage bonus increased to 0.7%/1.5% per stack (was 0.5%/1.0% per stack).
• Tumbling Waves has been removed from Elemental and replaced with Rolling Magma.
• Rolling Magma causes Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage to reduce the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.5/1.0 seconds.
• Splintered Elements increases Haste by 10% per stack (was 6%).
• Fire Elemental once again increases the duration of Flame Shock by 100% while active.
• Coming soon:
  • Heat Wave – Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.

Restoration
We also made some adjustments to the Restoration tree to improve accessibility to damage/utility focused talents without needing to talent into throughput.

We’ve swapped Resurgence and Lava Surge to allow for damage-focused builds to not require talenting into increased mana regeneration.