Hotfixes: November 21 2022, Warcraft Short Story: “The Vow Eternal”, Accessibility Updates in Dragonflight

November 21, 2022

Classes

• Death Knight
  • Blood
    • Fixed an issue with Bonestorm not activating Icy Talons.
  • Unholy
    • [With weekly restarts] Epidemic now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Bursting Sores damage is reduced by 10%.
    • Fixed an issue with the Coils of Devastation not applying to enemies within Battlegrounds and Arenas.
• Demon Hunter
  • [With weekly restarts] Immolation Aura now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • Havoc
    • [With weekly restarts] Fel Rush now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
• Druid
  • [With weekly restarts] Protector of the Pack talent now stores 5% of damage/healing (was 10%). The maximum stored amount increased to 160% of spell power (was 140%).
    • Developers’ note: Protector of the Pack was reaching its cap too quickly to be a satisfying build up. The slower build up and increased cap should result in a better pacing for this talent.
  • Feral
    • [With weekly restarts] Tear Open Wounds now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Lunar Inspiration’s Moonfire damage cast in Cat Form reduced by 40%.
      • Developers’ note: We want to keep Lunar Inspiration’s value as a ranged DPS option and cheap combo point generator, but bring its output more in line with other talents at its location in the tree.
  • Guardian
    • After the Wildfire now heals a maximum of 5 nearby targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] After the Wildfire is now affected by the Astral Influence talent.
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed several incorrect interactions between Berserk and Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc.
  • Restoration
    • Fixed an issue that caused Regrowth’s healing to not be increased properly by Soul of the Forest while using the Undergrowth and Rampant Growth talents.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Overgrowth to not consume Soul of the Forest.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Flash of Clarity to not increase the healing of Regrowth in all circumstances while using the Rampant Growth talent.
• Evoker
  • Fixed an issue where Soar would persist after being summoned.
• Hunter
  • Marksmanship
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 10%.
  • Survival
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 5%.
    • Fixed an issue where Wildfire Bomb would incorrectly generate Focus when talented into Coordinated Kill without Coordinated Assault being active.
• Mage
  • Fire
    • [With weekly restarts] Ignite damage reduced by 12%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Master of Flame now increases Ignite’s damage by 15% (was 18%).
  • Frost
    • [With weekly restarts] Frozen Orb damage reduced by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Blizzard now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
• Monk
  • Brewmaster
    • [With weekly restarts] Stormstout’s Last Keg’s bonus damage reduced to 20% (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Charred Passions’ bonus damage reduced to 50% (was 100%).
  • Mistweaver
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 6%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 25%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger Palm damage increased by 30%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Bonedust Brew now copies 50% of damage or healing for Mistweaver Monks (was 40%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Awakened Faeline now causes Spinning Crane Kick to heal 3 nearby allies (was 5) for 50% of the damage done (was 25%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed an issue that caused copied Blackout Kicks from Teachings of the Monastery to deal 20% less damage than intended.
  • Windwalker
    • [With weekly restarts] Resonant Fists now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
• Paladin
  • Protection
    • [With weekly restarts] Bulwark of Righteous Fury damage bonus reduced to 20% (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Judgment damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Avenger’s Shield damage increased by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Blessed Hammer damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Crusader Strike damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Hammer of the Righteous damage increased by 10%.
• Priest
  • Discipline
    • [With weekly restarts] The mana cost of Power Word: Radiance has been reduced by 15%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Flash Heal healing increased by 30%.
  • Shadow
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Sear now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
    • [With weekly restarts] Psychic Link now causes Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Mind Spike to deal 30%/60% of their damage to all other targets affected by your Vampiric Touch within 40 yards (was 15%/30%).
• Rogue
  • Assassination
    • [With weekly restarts] Indiscriminate Carnage cooldown reduced to 45 seconds (was 60 seconds).
  • Outlaw
    • [With weekly restarts] Fatal Flourish chance to restore Energy reduced to 60% (was 65%).
  • Subtlety
    • [With weekly restarts] Shuriken Storm damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadowstrike damage increased by 10%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Black Powder damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Secret Technique damage increased by 5%.
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Blades cooldown reduced to 2 minutes (was 3 minutes).
    • [With weekly restarts] Fixed an issue that prevented Secret Technique’s built-in cooldown reduction from benefitting from Echoing Reprimand’s Animacharged combo points.
• Shaman
  • Enhancement
    • [With weekly restarts] All damage dealt increased by 5%.
• Warlock
  • Fixed an issue where Demonic Circle: Summon and Teleport would continually get added to the action bar between Specialization swapping.
  • Affliction
    • [With weekly restarts] Malefic Affliction now causes your active Unstable Affliction to deal 8/13% additional damage (was 5/10%), up to 24/39% (was 15/30%), for the rest of its duration.
    • [With weekly restarts] Dread Touch now causes your target to take 30% additional damage from your damage over time effects for 6 seconds (was 20%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Doom Blossom damage increased by 15%.
  • Demonology
    • [With weekly restarts] Dreadbite now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
  • Destruction
    • [With weekly restarts] Rain of Fire damage increased by 15%.
• Warrior
  • Arms
    • [With weekly restarts] Executioner’s Precision now grants 35% increased damage per stack to Mortal Strike (was 30%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Bloodsurge now triggers 10% of the time (was 7%).
    • [With weekly restarts] Bladestorm damage increased to 60% (was 50%).
  • Fury
    • [With weekly restarts] Odyn’s Fury now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.

Dungeons and Raids

• Enemy difficulty has been adjusted to increase relative player power in all Legion raid encounters.

Items and Rewards

• Tome of the Tranquil Mind and other similar tomes are now gray items and are no longer usable.

Professions

• Fixed an issue where Shadowlands professions could not be trained before level 48 in Timewalking Campaigns.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to fish while seated if a fishing pole is equipped.

Quests

• Fixed an issue where using Intruder Alert! during “Brought to Light” would not reveal Horde saboteurs.

Reputation

• Fixed an issue where Evokers could not gain reputation with certain legacy factions.

Attend the wedding of the century with Wrathion as he seeks knowledge about the Dragon Isles, the ancestral homeland of Azeroth’s dragonflights.

Wrathion scoffed. The pleasure of your company. Ha! This wedding was a monumental event in Azeroth’s history—the joining of two powerful leaders—and yet he knew he had been invited only as a courtesy. No one in Azeroth really wanted a black dragon—especially him—at any sort of grand occasion. It was good political theater to trot out someone so instrumental in defeating the old god N’Zoth and saving the world, but neither the couple nor their high-profile guests would deem being in his company a pleasure.

Wrathion crumpled the scroll with unnecessary vigor and flung it into a corner. Weddings were notoriously sappy affairs, and this one was likely to be especially so. According to the reports of his Black Talon operatives, it was a true love match, one that had blazed to a flame during a poetry competition, of all things. There would be other giggling, happy pairs; families with their giddy children; old friends reuniting.

Positively stomach-churning.

Read and download this humorous and heartfelt short story by New York Times bestselling author Christie Golden.

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Greetings, adventurers! As we approach the launch of Dragonflight, we would like to highlight some of the recent accessibility improvements we’ve added to World of Warcraft. Since our last update in Shadowlands, we’ve been hard at work building new features and adding more options.

New accessibility features are available to everyone, and most options can be found in the Options panel of the Game Menu (default hotkey: Escape). Let’s look at some of the highlights.

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Updated UI and HUD

Sweeping changes have been made from the ground up to provide a clutter-free layout that allows players to customize their HUD to better fit their individual needs. Explore a fresh-looking Heads-Up Display (HUD) and User Interface (UI) designed to be adjustable, effective, attractive, and easily accessible for everyone. You can read all about it in our blog article.

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New Talent System

Dragonflight debuts the biggest change to the Talents system yet, giving you more freedom to experiment and more options to choose from than ever before. Get familiar with the changes so you can make the most of this update, including Loadouts, the Search Bar, and Importing and Sharing talent builds.

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Advanced Tip: Here are some advanced chat command lines that can be used to access the Talent frame.

Loads loadout for the current specialization by name. This command will load the first one found in the case of duplicate names.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToLoadoutByName(loadoutName)
• /loadoutname loadoutname
• /lon loadoutname

Loads loadout for the current specialization by dropdown index. Indices start at 1.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToLoadoutByIndex(1)
• /loadoutindex 2
• /loi 3

Activates specialization for the current class by spec name.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToSpecializationByName(specName)
• /specname specname
• /spn specname

Activates specialization for the current class by index in the order within the Specializations tab. Indices start at 1.

• /run ClassTalentHelper.SwitchToSpecializationByIndex(1)
• /specindex 2
• /spi 3

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New Options Menu

The previous “Interface” and “System” menus have been combined into the more intuitive “Options” menu. This update allows you to find various Accessibility options more easily.

New Option: Field of Vision (FOV) reduction

You can now adjust your camera FOV control in Options > System > Graphics to help with motion sickness.

New Option: Press and Hold Casting

When enabled, this option allows you to press and hold a keyboard hotkey to continually cast a spell on an Action Bar without having to repeatedly press the button. Keep in mind that this feature currently works only with spells and keyboard hotkeys (or gamepad buttons). Macros, mouse clicks and on-use items are not currently supported. You can enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Combat > Press and Hold Casting.

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New Option: Dracthyr Empowered Casting

Dracthyr Evokers have special Empowered abilities that they can use to change the strength of the spell or ability they are casting. By holding down a button on your keyboard or mouse, you will power up a spell. The longer you charge the spell, the more damage it could do or the more targets the spell could hit. You have the option to toggle between two modes for Empowered abilities: Hold and Release (this is the default option) or Press and Tap. Read more about the Dracthyr Evoker in our preview.

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New Feature: Interact Key

Press the Interact Key to interact with NPCs and objects with a key press (default hotkey: F) instead of your mouse. Interactive NPCs and objects will highlight as you enter interact range and face them. A helpful icon will appear above NPCs as needed. This also functions for quest item interactions, and we’ve added an option to enable a sound when an interaction becomes available. Enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Controls > Enable Interact Key.

New Action Targeting System

You can use Action Targeting to automatically target enemies as you approach them, allowing you to start casting abilities immediately. Action Targeting dynamically switches targets based on where you’re looking. This option doesn’t stop you from using the default Tab Target system to loc on a target. Enable this option under Options > Gameplay > Combat > Enable Action Targeting.

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Advanced Tip: While not available in the game settings directly, there are several changes that you can make to how this works in-game using command variants (CVars). To use a Cvar, enter the following into your chat window: /console [command] [value] (no brackets). For example: /console SoftTargetIconEnemy 1

A few below that you might find useful:

• The CVar SoftTargetInteractRange can be changed to increase the reporting range for an interaction. The default range is set to 10.
• By default, not everything displays an interact icon overhead, to reduce visual clutter in the game world. The following CVars are set to “0” by default, but can be set to “1” to enable interact icons in additional cases: SoftTargetIconEnemy, SoftTargetIconFriend, SoftTargetIconInteract, SoftTargetIconGameObject, SoftTargetLowPriorityIcons.
• You can force on the Name Plate for the interact target (including GameObjects) by setting the following CVars to “1”: SoftTargetNameplateEnemy, SoftTargetNameplateFriend, SoftTargetNameplateInteract.
• While not enabled by default, you can set SoftTargetFriend to enable soft targeting for friendly (healable) targets. It functions identically to enemy soft targeting, with a matching set of CVars to control/tune it.
• One additional CVar that can be particularly useful for visually impaired players is SoftTargetInteractArc. It normally defaults to “0”, which means interact requires direct facing to the target. Setting it to “1” or “2” gives it additional arc leeway.

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New Option: Display Name Size Adjustment

You can now adjust a minimum on-screen text size to keep it legible. The text will also fade to indicate distance rather than shrinking in size. Enable this option under Options > Accessibility > General > Minimum Character Name Size.

Gamepad API Support Improvements

We’ve made additional API updates to these control schemes improving support for controllers, touchpads, and gyros so addon creators can leverage them, including added support for gamepad button icons to improve their legibility on the action bar, and the ability to combine gamepad and mouse input in a single control scheme.

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Dragonriding: Ride Along

Enabling this setting allows you to make your Dragon Isles drake interactible. Any other players that interact with you will become whelps that move alongside your Dragon Isles Drake. Find Lithragosa near any Rostrum of Transformation, including the one at Skytop Observatory during the Dragonriding Tutorial or in Valdrakken, and select the “I heard something about helping my fellow adventurers?” dialog followed by “Please enable passengers for me.” Whelps are able to earn Dragon Glyphs, but do not count as participants during Dragonriding Racing.

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Dragonriding: FOV Effects

Dragonriding FOV changes do not occur if you have selected “Reduce Camera Motion” in the Accessibility > General menu.

Dragonriding: Full Screen Effects

Dragonriding top-speed full screen effects do not display if you have checked “Alternate Full Screen Effects” in the Options > Accessibility > General menu.

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Improving accessibility In World of Warcraft for all players is an ongoing effort. We’ll continue to work on making Azeroth a welcoming world of adventure for everyone and share more updates as they become available. Thanks for playing!