Up next in our quickstart guides for mythic dungeons we find ourselves in Tol Dagor! As always, this guide covers the changes in mythic compared to normal. So check out our normal quickstart guide if you’re not sure on the mechanics.
After not having hotfixes yesterday, today they’re back! Among them Feral druids receive their buffs and the final enocunter on Tol Dagor gets slightly nerfed on heroic/mythic.
Quote from: Blizzard
August 30, 2018
Azerite Powers
- Fixed an issue causing Indomitable Justice (Paladin) to deal less damage than intended under some circumstances.
Classes
- Demon Hunter
- Fixed an issue where Demon Hunters would sometimes prematurely fall to their deaths while Gliding away from Dazar’alor.
- Druid
- Feral
- Base energy regeneration increased by 10%.
- Berserk duration increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds).
- Brutal Slash energy cost reduced to 25 (was 30).
- Feral increase to Haste secondary stat value has been reduced to 25% (was 50%).
- Rip damage increased by 15%.
- Swipe energy cost reduced to 35 (was 40).
- Thrash energy cost reduced to 40 (was 45). Thrash damage reduced by 11%.
- Feral
Creatures and NPCs
- Treasure Hunters around Deadwash will no longer inadvertently flag Horde players for PvP.
Dungeons and Raids
- Freehold
- There is now an NPC that appears at the end of Freehold that will port a player out of the dungeon.
- Tol Dagor
- Overseer Korgus’s Heartstopper Venom now accrues 25% slower, and fully depletes over 2 seconds when the target is stunned by it.
- Ulduar
- Algalon the Observer’s damage dealing abilities now do less damage.
Items
- Merektha’s Fang now applies Noxious Venom to targets every 1 second (was every 0.5 seconds).
- Reinforced Hide and Folded Steel Plating now properly reduce damage taken.
- Wormhole Generator: Argus will now be interrupted by taking damage.
Missions
- The Amber Rallying Horn now correctly increases the success change of Missions by 10% for each accompanying troop.
Professions
- Alchemy
- Crafting Endless Tincture of Fractional Power and Surging Alchemist Stone will now provide an extra item when intended.
- Enchanting
- Coastal Surge, Siphoning, Torrent of Elements, and Gale-Force Striking weapon enchants should now properly scale down in reagent costs as recipe ranks increase.
- Engineering
- The Interdimensional Companion Repository should now stack up to 20.
- Inscription
- Contracts now correctly have a 7-day duration.
World Quests
- Profession World Quests should no longer appear on the map for characters who do not know that Profession.
- Tidesage Ritualists have been sagely taught their tidal ritual, and should no longer evade during “Tidal Teachings”.
- “Beachhead” no longer causes nearby Protection Paladins to lose Last Defender.
As we continue our way through all the mythic dungeons we find ourselves in Atal’Dazar next! As always, this guide covers the changes in mythic compared to normal. So check out our normal quickstart guide if you’re not sure on the mechanics.
There are more changes coming to feral druids after last week’s buffs!
Quote from: Blizzard
Feral Druid changes coming soon (this week):
- Energy regeneration rate increased by 10%
- Rip damage increased by 15%
- Berserk duration increased from 15 to 20 sec
- Brutal Slash cost reduced from 30 to 25 energy
- Swipe cost reduced from 40 to 35 energy
- Thrash cost reduced by from 45 to 40 energy, and damage reduced proportionally
We’re reducing the energy cost of Thrash but also proportionally reducing the damage. The goal is easier ramp-up time in AOE situations, while avoiding causing Thrash to be added to the single target rotation (since it’s close to Shred’s Energy to damage ratio), which we think wouldn’t make for a better overall rotation.
- The spec’s hidden 50% increase to Haste secondary stat value reduced to 25%.
This helps alleviate a secondary stat scaling issue, and both the Energy and damage loss should be overcompensated for by the increase to base Energy regeneration rate plus the other changes listed. We eventually want to remove this hidden bonus entirely, but since players have already made gearing choices based on Haste being their best secondary stat, we don’t want to upset that in the short-term, so we’ll do this in two parts.
The sum of these changes is intended and expected to be a increase in Energy income, pacing, and damage in all situations.
Other issues we’ve been talking about (future patch timeline):
- Better consolidate Energy-increasing and heavy pacing-impacting talents into the same row, and reduce the pacing impact that a single talent hasThe goal is to reduce the Energy/pacing swing between different talent builds, which allows us to bring up the bottom without letting the highest Energy/pacing talent build with endgame/late expansion gear to get near overflow range
- Better separate Single Target talents and Multitarget Talents into their own rowsThis is slightly more of a challenge on Druid specs than most specs, due to Druids having only 4 throughput talent rows (compared to most specs having 5), but it’s a goal we have for all specs.
- Provide better AOE talent optionsEchoing suggestions – a combo-point spender is a possible direction. There may be an additional opportunity to do something with Thrash here. It functions as an enabler, but could be doing even more for the spec.
- BloodtalonsBloodtalons does a great job at adding complexity to the rotation, but we’re not sure the method in which it does that is right for the spec long-term. Bloodtalons asks you to frequently cast a Regrowth in exchange for its buff, which in a group/raid, means either you’re required to keep an eye on group/raid frames (which is a lot to ask) or you make a macro to mindlessly cast Regrowth on yourself (which isn’t great).
- Remove the spec’s bonus to Haste secondary stat (currently on live 50%, soon to be 25%) entirely. Re-adjust Energy/pacing to compensate.Mentioned above, but now that Bleeds scale with Haste, it’s both no longer needed to make Haste a relevant stat for Feral, and is also contributing to expansion-wide scaling issues.
- Remove cat form’s 40% bonus to auto-attack damage.This contributes to feedback that abilities don’t hit hard enough and have low Energy to damage conversion ratios.
Note that as we’ve mentioned before, we’re watching overall class tuning and plan to make a general tuning pass later next week.
Waycrest Manor is the next mythic dungeon in our quickstart guide series. This guide covers the changes in mythic compared to normal. So check out our normal quickstart guide if you’re not sure on the mechanics.
More hotfixes have made their way to the live servers including a few dungeon balance changes and the ability to trade azerite armor!
Quote from: Blizzard
Here you’ll find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to World of Warcraft: Battle For Azeroth. Some of the hotfixes below take effect the moment they were implemented, while others may require scheduled realm restarts to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. This list will be updated as additional hotfixes are applied.
Hotfixes
August 28, 2018
Azerite Powers
- Fixed an issue causing Combined Might and Stronger Together to grant less Haste, Versatility, Mastery, and Critical Strike than intended when those respective buffs are triggered.
Classes
- Druid
- Tranquility’s heal over time is now visible to the caster on raid frames.
Dungeons
- King’s Rest
- Spectral Berserker now recasts Severing Blade after 8 seconds (was 4 seconds).
- Shadow of Zul’s Shadow Barrage direct damage reduced by 30%.
- All enemy casters now have mana bars.
- Siege of Boralus
- Viq’Goth’s health has been increased.
- Tal Dagor
- Overseer Korgus
- It is no longer possible to outrange Hearstopper Venom.
- Overseer Korgus
Items
- [With server restarts in each region] Azerite armor from Dungeons is now tradeable.
- Fixed a bug in which several trinkets were unintentionally breaking nearby crowd control effects.
Player versus Player
- Many low-level items with effects that provide crowd-control such as Silence or Stun will now stop working at a level appropriate to the item’s expansion.
Professions
- Cooking
- Crafted foods now provide significantly more health and mana.
- Engineering
- Holographic Horror Projector will now properly break after an appropriate amount of damage has been dealt to the target.
- Holographic Horror Projector’s fear effect is now classified as Magic and can be dispelled.
Quests
- Fixed a bug preventing Zolani from being available to complete “Evidence of Evil”.
- The Signal Falstad ability should be more reliably available to players who logout or leave The Great Sea while completing Chapter 4 of the Alliance War Campaign.
World Quests
- Being hit by the Frightened Stomps of the Frightened Brutosaur during “Underfoot” will no longer flag players for PvP.
- Jammer no longer disappears when defeated in a pet battle, and no longer has other pets helping him in the pet battle.
World
- Several missing Zandalar mailboxes have been found and delivered to their proper locations.
This week’s round of hotfixes have started and on the weekly reset it will bring a change to the Auction House in hopes of reducing the amount of 1 stacks for crafting materials. Read the full details below:
Hotfixes: August 27
Quote from: Blizzard
August 27, 2018
Achievements
- Players who have earned that Sweete booty by completing the Harlan Sweete encounter should now be awarded That Sweete Booty.
Auction House
- [Following server restarts] The deposit for certain tradeskill goods has increased by 20% of the asking price of a single unit. This cost is constant, regardless of stack size. As with the standard deposit, this is returned to the seller when the auction successfully sells.
Character Services
- Players that faction change will have Battle For Azeroth flight paths after the change.
- Players that change back to their original faction will have all of their learned flight paths.
Classes
- Druid
- Feral
- Feral Frenzy should more consistently deal its full damage and generate its full combo points, even if you move slightly out of range after casting.
- Feral
- Paladin
- Hammer of Righteous splash damage correctly benefits from Last Defender and Avenging Wrath.
Creatures and NPCs
- Vathikur should now spawn once all pit snakes have been killed.
Items
- Faction items can now be sold back to their Quartermaster within 2 hours for a full refund.
- Fixed an issue where Merektha’s Fang could be cancelled by Remorseless Winter.
- Fixed an issue preventing Merektha’s Fang from critically hitting.
- Merektha’s Fang is now on the Global Cooldown, and its damage has been increased by 317%.
- Fixed an issue where Darkmoon Deck: Tides would sometimes activate less often than intended.
Pet Battles
- The following items can now correctly be used to grant you their associated battle pets: Baby Crawg, Wind-up Frog, Ball of Tentacles, Undulating Blue Sac.
- Inland Croaker battle pets now have the correct Sticky Goo level 20 ability.
Quests
- Players are now directed back to Ata the Winglord when removed from the vehicle during “City of Gold”.
- Fixed an issue where Brother Alen could become unresponsive during “Archived Knowledge”.
- Auras no longer persist on players after completing “Beachhead”.
World Quests
- The “Lost Goat” should now respawn as expected.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing “Stopping the Infestation” from starting properly.
- For “Cut Off Potential”, Zandalari Beastkeepers are now hostile to Alliance Allied Races, as intended.
World
- Horde players can now rest at the inns at the Blood Gate and the Diretusk Hollow.
- The Banshee’s Wail and Wind’s Redemption are now rested areas.
Auction House Update
Quote from: Blizzard
To address some issues related to the Auction House, we’re reconsidering how deposits—the refundable fees you pay to list your auctions—are calculated. This fee is based on the item’s vendor price, and for profession materials in particular, vendors offer very low prices, so these mats have a low deposit cost. Deposits are substantial on items such as BoE uncommon gear, gems, and so forth, but not trade skill materials (trade goods such as cloth, ore, leather, etc.).
One thing we’ve identified as particularly troublesome is a large volume of trade skill materials being auctioned off in stacks of 1. Some addons make posting quantities of this size trivial to do, resulting in dozens, if not hundreds, of pages of auctions for a single item. As we looked at ways to change this behavior and improve the overall Auction House experience, we found that we prefer to avoid inflexible solutions such as caps on the number of listings a player can make, or increased minimum stack counts, which might interfere with many players’ common gameplay habits.
Our current plan is to increase the deposit cost of some profession materials on a per-stack basis, which should provide incentive for players to post items in larger stacks.
Here’s an example:
• Let’s say that a player is trying to sell 200 Tidespray Linen for 10g (gold) each. Today, each item has the normal deposit cost of 1c (copper), with a 1s (silver) minimum deposit, so 1 auction of 200 linen requires a deposit of 1s, and 200 auctions of 1 linen each adds up to a total deposit of 2g.
• Now imagine an additional 20% deposit added to the listing fee per auction. With an asking price of 10g each, that raises the deposit by 2g per stack. In the case of 1 stack of 200 linen, the total buyout price is 2000g, and the new deposit is 2g1s. In the case of 200 individual stacks, the new deposit of an additional 2g per stack brings the total deposit up to 402g.
In either case, the deposit is returned to the seller if the item sells. Successful auctions aren’t affected by this change.
Our goal is to give players some forewarning on this change, and to gather feedback. We’re putting together a list of the items that would be affected by this deposit change, which we expect to be limited to high-quantity trade goods. Furthermore, we’re deploying the change to the PTR first, so that addon authors can work through the change while we test it thoroughly.
This change will likely be a temporary measure, as we’re also working to broadly improve the default Auction House in the future. It’s clear to us that many players use addons because they find the default Auction House interface inadequate. A temporary change to deposit fees will help with this in the short term, and we’ll continue to work on overall improvements to the Auction House for a future patch.