World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Classes

• Demon Hunter
  
  • [With weekly restarts] The Hunt’s damage over time effect no longer deals an additional tick on application. Damage dealt over the total duration remains unchanged.
    
  • Vengeance
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Thick Skin armor bonus increased to 130% (was 100%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Calcified Skin initial damage reduction value increased to 12% (was 10%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Painbringer duration increased to 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
      
• Druid
  
  • Feral
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All ability damage dealt increased by 3%.
      
• Evoker
  
  • Devastation
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Fire Breath damage increased by 10% for Devastation specialization only. Does not apply to PvP combat.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Lay Waste increases Deep Breath damage by 15%/30%, (was 10%/20%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Eternity Surge damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Firestorm damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Eye of Infinity generates 2 Essence on critical strike (was 1 Essence).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Spellweaver's Dominance increases critical strike damage to 230% (was 220%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Iridescence damage bonus increased to 20% (was 15%).
      
• Hunter
  
  • Survival
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All ability damage and pet damage increased by 2%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Butchery and Carve damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Fury of the Eagle damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 15%.
      
• Mage
  
  • Fire
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Flamestrike damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Living Bomb damage increased by 25%.
      
  • Frost
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Frostbolt damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Ray of Frost damage increased by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.
      
• Monk
  
  • Brewmaster
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Efficacy of Stagger against Magical damage increased to 45% (was 35%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Cooldown of Celestial Brew reduced to 45 sec (was 60).
      
  • Mistweaver
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All healing increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Vivify healing increased by an additional 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 6%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 8%
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger Palm damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Awakened Faeline now transfers 70% of Spinning Crane Kick's damage into healing (was 60%).
      
• Paladin
  
  • Retribution
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Crusader Strike Damage increased by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Blade of Justice damage increased by 25%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Final Reckoning damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Shield of Vengeance cooldown reduced to 90 sec (was 120).
      
    • Developers’ notes: Some of Retribution’s main rotational buttons do not feel as good to press as we’d like so we’re making some changes to help improve these abilities. Additionally, their survivability isn’t where we would like so we’re making some improvements to their defensive kit as well. We are looking at Retribution as a whole and will have more to share in the future.
      
• Priest
  
  • Holy
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All healing done increased by 3%.
      
  • Shadow
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Focused Will provides 10% damage reduction for Shadow (down from 15%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Blast damage increased by 15% (Shadow only).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Flay damage increased by 15% (this includes Mind Flay: Insanity, but not the proc from Idol of C’Thun).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Spike damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Void Torrent damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Devouring Plague damage increased by 15%.
      
    • Developers’ notes: These changes are aimed at improving Shadow’s single target DPS. The change to Focused Will is a targeted change for PvP to reduce Shadow’s survivability.
      
• Rogue
  
  • Outlaw
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced Precise Cuts (Talent) bonus to Blade Flurry damage per missing target below its maximum to 2% (was 3%).
      
      • Developers’ notes: As we monitor the developing M+ meta and related data, we have recognized that Outlaw is overperforming. We expect this change will reduce Outlaw’s damage output in encounters with target count above 1 and below 8, as their damage is currently more consistent than we intend for dungeons and encounters that frequently present those circumstances.
        
• Warlock
  
  • Fixed an issue where Demon Armor from the Conflict and Strife essence persisted outside of Battle for Azeroth zones.
    
  • Affliction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Agony damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Corruption damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Drain Soul damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Pandemic Invocation damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Seed of Corruption damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Bolt damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Siphon Life damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Unstable Affliction backlash damage is no longer increased from increased damage dealt modifiers or effects that increase Unstable Affliction's damage.
      
  • Destruction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Channel Demonfire damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Rain of Fire damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Soul Fire damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Infernal and Blasphemy Immolation damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Conflagrate damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Immolate damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Incinerate damage increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP.
      

Dungeons and Raids

• The Nokhud Offensive
  
  • Granyth
    
    • Fixed an issue where multiple players could interact with the ballista at the same time and each fire an arrow.
      
  • Teera and Maruuk
    
    • Fixed an issue where Blessing of Protection allowed players to be immune to the effects of Teera's Gale Arrow.
      
• Ruby Life Pools
  
  • Melidrussa Chillworn
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced the damage of triggering a Hailbomb by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced party-wide AoE damage on the initial cast of Hailbombs by 66%
      
      • Developers’ note: The initial on-cast hit from Hailbombs was never intended to be a large source of damage, and when scaled up on Mythic+ it is contributing more damage to the fight than we’d like, so we’re reining it in to give healers more breathing room to recover from Melidrussa’s other abilities.
        
  • Kokia Blazehoof
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced period damage of Searing Wounds by 25%
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced damage of Scorched Earth by 25%
      
• Mythic+
  
  • Algeth’ar Academy
    
    • Fixed an issue where some enemies near Vexamus did not provide Enemy Forces credit, and adjusted Enemy Forces requirements accordingly
      
    • Developers’ note: This will make enemies in the dungeon "appear" to grant slightly less Enemy Forces credit, but defeating the enemies affected by this change was required to engage Vexamus, so there shouldn't be any real gameplay impact.
      
• Vault of the Incarnates
  
  • Raszageth
    
    • Reduced the push effect of Hurricane Wing on Mythic difficulty.
      

Player versus Player

• Classes
  
  • Demon Hunter
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Soul Rending leech bonus reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
      
    • Havoc
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Glimpse (PvP Talent) damage reduction reduced to 35% (was 75%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Essence Break damage bonus for Chaos Strike and Blade Dance reduced by 37.5% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Soulrend damage reduced by 16.7% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: We have noticed Havoc Demon Hunter overperforming in several facets of PvP including personal survivability, burst damage, and overall DPS. We’re taking action to reduce their effectiveness in these areas while still aiming to keep them competitive.
        
  • Evoker
    
    • Preservation
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Energy Loop’s mana regeneration reduced by 25% in PvP combat.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Energy Loop’s mana restoration has been overperforming compared to its contribution in PvE due to game-wide reduced mana regeneration within PvP instances. We’re adjusting this to bring it in line with expected benefits, but still want this effect to remain a powerful option as we feel it can lead to compelling decision making with Essence resources.
          
  • Mage
    
    • Arcane
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Siphon Storm’s effectiveness has been reduced by 50% in PvP combat.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Siphon Storm has been a culprit for one-shot scenarios, so we are adjusting its effectiveness down heavily.
          
    • Frost
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Reduced Glacial Spike's damage increased from Mastery: Icicles by 25%. This will be reflected in the tooltip in a later patch.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Siphon Storm has been a culprit for one-shot scenarios, so we are adjusting its effectiveness down heavily.
          
  • Monk
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 15%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger's Palm damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 15%).
      
    • Mistweaver
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick now deals 12.5% additional damage in PvP (was 25%).
        
      • Developer’s note: We are looking to offset the incoming PvE buffs to Rising Sun Kick as we think it currently hits hard enough to be effective for Mistweaver in PvP.
        
  • Windwalker
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Thunderfist damage reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Skyreach increases critical strike chance by 30% in PvP Combat (was 50%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Fists of Fury damage increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
      
    • Developers’ notes: Windwalker burst has continued to be above a level we’re comfortable with. We’re targeting Thunderfist and Skyreach, as they have been large contributors to this. We’re also increasing their sustained damage, as we feel there is room for that to improve as their burst is reduced.
      
  • Priest
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Flash Heal healing is increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 20%).
      
    • Holy
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Heal healing is increased by 35% in PvP Combat (was 25%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Holy Word: Serenity healing is increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: Holy received PvP reductions in casted healing effectiveness in previous patches that we now feel are unnecessary and are reverting. We also feel Holy Word: Serenity has not been as effective as we would like at handling burst damage, so we are increasing that as well.
        
    • Shadow
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Word: Death damage reduced by 30% in PvP Combat for Shadow only (was 20%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Mind Blast damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat for Shadow only.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Mind Spike damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Devouring Plague damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Vampiric Touch damage reduced by 5% in PvP Combat (was increased by 10%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] The trigger rate of Shadowy Insight has been reduced by 25% while in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] The trigger rate of Surge of Darkness has been reduced by 25% while in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: Shadow Priest has been widely overperforming, so we are looking to offset recent PvE buffs to them and reduce their power defensively through changes to Focused Will. We’re also reducing their instant proc damage availability as we feel Shadow Priests do not have to hard cast spells as often as we would like them to.
        
  • Rogue
    
    • Assassination
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Improved Garrote’s Garrote damage bonus reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Iron Wire damage reduction debuff now has a PvP duration of 4 seconds (was 8 seconds).
        
      • Developers’ notes: Assassination’s spread and single target Garrote pressure has been very high. We’re targeting this by decreasing the effectiveness of Improved Garrote. Iron Wire’s damage reduction effect has also felt too potent to us at preventing enemy pressure.
        
  • Warlock
    
    • Demonology
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Demonic Strength unleashes a Felstorm that deals 150% increased damage in PvP Combat (down from 400%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Demonfire damage increased by 75% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Dreadbite damage reduced by 10% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: We feel Demonic Strength can be a difficult spell to notice and has little counter play compared to Demonic Tyrant and its associated Demonfire casts. We’re looking to adjust Demonology’s burst sources while aiming to keep them at the same relative power. We also want to slightly reduce Demonology’s overall pressure by targeting Dreadbite.
        
  • Warrior
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Defensive Stance now reduces damage done by 15% (was 20%) in PvP combat.
      
      • Developers’ notes: Defensive Stance was adjusted in previous patches to address damage issues we no longer feel are present for Warriors. We’re increasing damage done in Defensive Stance to help increase their offensive pressure without affecting them defensively.
        

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

• Fixing an issue where Wintergrasp faction win conditions could be unintentionally reset, resulting in players not receiving the Essence of Wintergrasp buff.

Greetings,

As we near the release of patch 3.4.1 and Ulduar, one frequent topic is transfer and new character creation restrictions present on some of the largest realms in the US and EU. We understand the desire for players to play with their friends on these realms, and while these realms are not currently queuing, their population is still larger than the realms were designed for, and queues could return with the release of future content. There are many other very healthy and active realms available that are thriving, and we have no plans to lift realms restrictions on these realms in the near future.

We do recognize however that PvP has been cross realm for all of almost all of WoW’s existence, and that realm restrictions get in the way of utilizing team-less Arena that was added in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. As a result, we’ve implemented a system to allow you to group with players on other realms, and queue into Arena matches and Battlegrounds together. We feel that this is a sensible change considering that Arenas have been cross server since their inception in 2007, and Battlegrounds have been cross-realm since shortly after they were introduced back in original World of Warcraft.

We’ve enabled this functionality on the Wrath Classic PTR, and we’d love it if you wanted to hop in with some friends to help us test this.

How to use this:

In order to invite a player from a different realm, you’ll need to type /invite playername-realmname. So for example, if I was on the Classic PTR Realm 1 and I wanted to invite “Aggrend” from the Classic PTR Realm 2, I’d type (with no spaces):

/invite Aggrend-ClassicPTRRealm2

…and the other player would see the following:



From there you would be placed into a cross-realm group:



At this point, the group leader could queue for Battlegrounds or Arenas as normal. You will join the same match, be placed on the same team, and gain honor and arena rating as you would with any normal Arena or Battleground group.

Please note that this can only be used to allow players on the same faction to group with each other cross-realm. Additionally, this system may only be used to queue for pvp and will not allow you join the group leader’s layer in the outdoor world, or enter non-BG, non-Arena dungeons or raid instances with the group leader in any way. Party chat functions as you’d expect it to, but past chatting and doing Arenas and Battlegrounds, group members on separate realms may not directly interact with each other at all.

We’d love to get feedback on how this functions as well as any bug reports for anything that feels like it doesn’t work like it should with this system. Thank you for all of your bug reports and feedback so far for patch 3.4.1, and we are really looking forward to seeing you tackle Ulduar, Titan Rune Dungeons, and everything else present in Phase 2 of Wrath Classic when 3.4.1 releases very soon!

---

Will this allow OCE to queue in the NA pool?

This is a very good question. If we do indeed move forward with this change on live US region realms, we will need to re-merge Oceanic and US PvP queues for it to work properly in the US/Oceanic region. I don’t have a lot else to report on this at this moment, as our focus here is to test the baseline functionality of cross-realm PvP groups, but in the months since we split the US and Oceanic battlegroups, this is has been a very, very frequent request, so it’s something we are looking at very closely.

Hopefully we’ll be ready to share more very soon. Thanks for asking!

To speak a bit to the original question of this thread:

“Are the devs sure that the crafting order system is a success?”

The crafting order system is by no means perfect. There are many ways we would like to improve it over time. We have been having many of these discussions internally, as well as listening to feedback from all of you. Since this is such a new system though, we don’t want to make any snap-judgements and make big changes before giving things a chance to settle and seeing how it develops over time.

We do believe that the system has been successful in one of its core goal though - to enable crafters to make soulbound, useful gear for players at all levels of play. This elevates the overall value of professions within the game and helps to deliver on the fantasy of being a crafter creating valuables for yourself and others.

It has also been successful in providing a new way to for crafters and customers to interact, one which is inherently more social, and when you get to use it, hopefully more satisfying than previous ways to do so! But again, very much not perfect!

As far as the public order system goes, it seems to be working well as an easy way to get something crafted for yourself if you aren’t worried about getting the best quality and want it quickly. This was always its intent. We definitely wish that as crafters, it was easier to find public orders to fill. Unfortunately even though there are quite a few public orders going through the system, given the minimal effort it takes to fulfill a public order and the relative number of crafters around to fill those orders, there will almost never be many orders up an any given time with the way it currently works…they get filled too quickly and easily.

We are looking into ways to have more orders to fulfill though, because for most, we think it tends to be a pretty satisfying activity and a great way to earn skill and a bit of gold when you can find an order to fulfill.

We also think the guild / personal order side of things are working moderately well. These methods allow players to connect and get their items crafted with more control. There are several issues we would very much like to improve though, including:

• Helping better connect customers and crafters. There is nothing wrong with a bit of effort to get the best gear, or to attract customers. This is currently mostly accomplished through trade chat though, which while it does have a nice social component to it (something we love to see more of), it is by no means an ideal way to find a crafter for a specific item, or a customer to craft for.
• Helping better support interactions between players who are depending on inspiration to reach a higher quality level.

We suspect that as players finish getting their high end crafting gear and complete purchases of other one time uses for Artisan’s Mettle, players will be more willing to use Artisan’s Mettle to guarantee higher quality crafts. That will help, but even then, inspiration will always be a useful way to get max quality gear crafted. The crafting orders system is not supporting this as well as we would like it to, since as a customer, you cannot place an order and know exactly what you will get - you need to rely on a handshake deal that your crafter has the inspiration they promised when attempting to craft items for you.

In addition, there will be lots of other quality of life features we will be looking into to help making it smoother to use, easier to learn, and more.

As always, thank you for the feedback. We will continue working to improve professions in general and the crafting order system in specific! Meanwhile, happy gathering and crafting!

-Drough

Classes

• Evoker
  
  • Preservation
    
    • Fixed an unintended interaction between the Time of Need talent and Lifespark, the 4-piece tier set bonus.
• Warlock
  
  • Demonology
    
    • Fixed an issue where Wrathful Minion and Demonic Inspiration would occasionally cause Warlocks to not generate the correct amount of Soul Shards outside of combat.

Dungeons and Raids

• Adjusted various Arcane visuals in Court of Stars, Algathar Academy, and The Arcane Vaults to be more visible.
• Court of Stars
  
  • Advisor Melandrus
    
    • Improved visual clarity for Piercing Gale.
• Vault of the Incarnates
  
  • Dathea, Ascended
    
    • Reduced Thunderbolt’s damage by 33% on Heroic difficulty.
    • Reduced Thunder Caller’s health on lower group sizes on Heroic difficulty.
    • Reduced Cyclone’s damage on lower group sizes on Heroic and below difficulties.
    • Volatile Infusers no longer cast Unstable Gusts at low health on Heroic and below difficulties.
    • Zephyr Slam’s initial knockback distance reduced by 40% On Heroic and below difficulties.
  • Kurog Grimtotem
    
    • The damage from the elemental enemies’ Presence abilities during Kurog’s intermission now respect Avoidance. This is to keep them consistent with Kurog’s Dominance damage abilities respecting Avoidance.
• Mythic+
  
  • The Nokhud Offensive
    
    • Granyth
      
      • Tectonic Stomp’s area of effect now correctly matches the visual on all difficulties.
    • Raging Tempest
      
      • Fixed an issue causing Surge of Power to damage players through immunities on all difficulties.
      • Surge of Power damage reduced by 80%.
      • Fixed an issue causing Surge of Power to not scale with keystone level.
        
        • Developers’ note: We are nerfing the damage of Surge of Power to compensate for fixing an issue that was causing Surge of Power damage to not scale with keystone level.
  • Ruby Life Pools
    
    • Thunderhead’s Storm Breath, Flamegullet’s Flame Breath, and Erkhart Stormvein’s Cloudburst no longer damage player pets or guardians.
  • Shadowmoon Burial Grounds
    
    • Sadana Bloodfury
      
      • Fixed an issue that caused Defiled Souls to regenerate health during the encounter.
      • Fixed an issue causing Dark Eclipse to kill pets.
      • Fixed an issue causing Defiled Souls to contribute to Enemy Forces.
    • Ner’Zul
      
      • Fixed an issue causing Ritual of Bones to not scale with keystone level.

Items and Rewards

• We have slightly increased the amount of Primal Chaos gained from the Victorious Contender’s Strongbox at all ranks, but particularly at the lower ones, to help make it easier to earn enough for the Embellished PvP Crafted Gear.
• Fixed an issue where Broodkeeper’s Promise would snapshot the caster’s Versatility for the buff’s full duration when calculating the heal.

Player versus Player

• Classes
  
  • Evoker
    
    • Time Stop may no longer be cast on Mind Controlled targets.

Quests

• Valdrakken
  
  • Deployed additional fixes for “Aiding the Accord: The Hunt is On" not always granting quest credit when completing a Grand Hunt.