World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Classes

Druid

• Guardian
  
  • [With realm restarts] Mangle and auto attack damage increased by 10%.
    
    • Developers’ note: Vengeance Demon Hunter and Guardian Druid have fallen behind in damage, particularly in single target. Our intent with these changes is to improve their performance in single-target without unduly impacting AOE environments.

Demon Hunter

• Vengeance
  
  • [With realm restarts] All damage and healing abilities increased by 3%.
  • [With realm restarts] Fracture and Shear damage increased by 20%.
  • [With realm restarts] Auto attack damage increased by 10%.
    
    • Developers’ note: Vengeance Demon Hunter and Guardian Druid have fallen behind in damage, particularly in single target. Our intent with these changes is to improve their performance in single-target without unduly impacting AOE environments.

Warlock

• Affliction
  
  • [With realm restarts] All ability damage increased by 5%.
    
    • Developers’ note: We’re seeing Affliction falling behind a bit in various content and feel a straight increase to their damage is warranted.
• Destruction
  
  • [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Blasphemy no longer grants Rain of Chaos.
  • [With realm restarts] Chaos Bolt damage increased by 5% in PvE combat.
  • [With realm restarts] Incinerate damage increased by 20%.
  • [With realm restarts] Immolate damage increased by 20%.
  • [With realm restarts] Conflagrate damage increased by 10% in PvE combat.
    
    • Developers’ note: In order to address Destruction’s excess soul shard generation issues, we’re removing the ability for the Blasphemy to grant Rain of Chaos. This will prevent their shard generation from getting out of control and rein in their AOE output. However, this will have some effect on Destruction’s single-target damage and to help counter the impact we’re increasing the damage of several single-target spells in the Destruction toolkit. This is a big shift so we’ll be monitoring feedback closely and will adjust in the future if needed.

Dungeons and Raids

• Sepulcher of the First Ones
  
  • Halondrus
    
    • Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to pick up Earthbreaker Charge immediately after recovering from the effects of Podtender (Dreamweaver Soulbind).
• The Necrotic Wake
  
  • Fixed an issue causing Destruction Warlock’s Rain of Fire to not proc Rain of Chaos or trigger Blasphemy while fighting on the necropolis.

Player versus Player

• Developers’ note: We have been monitoring PvP balance over Season 3 and are making the following adjustments. We look forward to continue to watch how the rest of the PvP season progresses.

Druid

• Balance
  
  • (2) Set Bonus: Fixed an issue where Celestial Pillar would break players from stealth.

Hunter

• [With realm restarts] Craven Strategem (Runecarving Power) now reduces the cooldown of Feign Death by 5 seconds in PvP combat (was 15 seconds).
  
  • Developers’ note: The short cooldown of Feign Death from Craven Strategem can be frustrating to play against, especially for classes whose primary damage comes from damage over time effects. We are changing the cooldown reduction from Craven Strategem to address this.

Mage

• [With realm restarts] Flow of Time (Conduit) effectiveness reduced by 50% in PvP combat.
• [With realm restarts] Netherwind Armor (PvP Talent) now reduces the chance of suffering a critical strike by 10% (was 15%).
  
  • Developers’ note: Mage survivability has continued to be higher than we would like, so we are targeting some of their defensive tools to address that while keeping the overall feel of Mage gameplay intact.

Monk

• Mistweaver
  
  • [With realm restarts] Renewing Mist now heals for an additional 25% in PvP combat (was 10%).
  • [With realm restarts] Enveloping Mist now heals for an additional 10% in PvP combat.
  • [With realm restarts] Chrysalis (PvP Talent) now reduces the cooldown of Life Cocoon by 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
    
    • Developers’ note: Mistweavers are continuing to have a difficult time responding to burst damage reliably, as they regularly have to open their primary school in order to catch up. Increasing healing over time effects and having Cocoon available more frequently is intended to provide them with better tools to respond to burst damage more reliably.

Paladin

• Retribution
  
  • [With realm restarts] Templar’s Vindication (Conduit) now causes Templar’s Verdict to deal an additional 15% damage (was 30%) in PvP combat.
  • [With realm restarts] Shield of Vengeance damage reduced by 40% in PvP combat. Absorption amount unchanged.
    
    • Developers’ note: Retribution Paladin burst damage has scaled higher than we’d like, outpacing survivability and counterplay. We are looking to address some of those bigger swing moments without affecting their overall toolkit.

Priest

• Holy
  
  • [With realm restarts] Mana regeneration reduced by 65% in PvP combat (was 60%).
  • [With realm restarts] Holy Word: Chastise now incapacitates enemy players for 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).
  • [With realm restarts] Censure (Talent) now causes Holy Word: Chastise to stun enemy players for 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).
  • [With realm restarts] Ray of Hope (PvP Talent) cooldown is now 90 seconds (was 60 seconds).
    
    • Developers’ note: Holy Priests have been outperforming other healers, and we are looking to reduce the power of commonly picked talents and mana efficiency to better fit within other spec representation and performance.
• Shadow
  
  • [With realm restarts] Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
  • [With realm restarts] Vampiric Touch damage increased by 10% in PvP combat.
    
    • Developers’ note: Shadow Priest has not received as much benefit from its set bonus as other specializations in PvP, so we are increasing parts of their consistent damage to help their overall performance.

Rogue

• Outlaw
  
  • [With realm restarts] Float like a Butterfly (PvP Talent) now reduces the cooldown of Evasion and Feint by 0.5 seconds per combo point spent (was 1 second).
    
    • Developers’ note: The uptime of defensive abilities for Outlaw has been a point of frustration due to less opportunity for enemies to capitalize on gaps of defensive cooldowns. This is intended to address that, while keeping the feel of Outlaw intact.

Warlock

• [With realm restarts] Dark Pact (Talent) now provides an absorb shield based on 300% of health sacrificed in PvP combat (was 250%).
• [With realm restarts] Essence Drain (PvP Talent) now causes the target to deal 9% less damage to the Warlock per stack.
• [With realm restarts] Essence Drain (PvP Talent) now stacks up to 4 times (was 5).
• [With realm restarts] Gateway Mastery (PvP Talent) now reduces the time between how often players can take your Demonic Gateway by 30 seconds (was 15 seconds).
• Affliction
  
  • [With realm restarts] Soul Leech grants an absorb shield based on 12% of damage dealt in PvP combat (was 8%).
    
    • Developers’ note: In 9.2.5 we removed the PvP talent Demon Armor and changed Gladiator’s Echoing Resolve to no longer interact with interrupt effects, which impacted Affliction Warlocks with their spell casts being a single school. With the combination of these changes, Affliction Warlocks’ defensives have been lower than we’d like even after our stamina increase to their base kit, so we are targeting to equip them with better survival tools in PvP.

Warrior

• [With realm restarts] The amount of Mastery granted by Conqueror’s Banner (Necrolord Ability) reduced by 33% in PvP combat.
• Fury
  
  • [With realm restarts] Crushing Blow (Raging Blow from Reckless Abandon (Talent)) now deals 20% reduced damage in PvP combat.
    
    • Developers’ note: Overall Fury damage has scaled higher than we’d like in Season 3 especially with their set bonus. We are intending to bring down some of the moments of volatility while still maintaining the high consistent damage that fulfills the fantasy of a Fury Warrior.

User Interface and Accessibility

• Fixed an issue where the camera’s field of view could be increased past 90.
  
  • Developers’ note: The ability to restrict the field of view was added in 9.2.5 as an accessibility measure to help alleviate motion sickness. All of World of Warcraft -- the art, combat mechanics, and player interactions -- are built within the parameters of the user interface experience and scale. Increasing the field of view beyond the limit that has been in place since WoW launched was not intended.
    

Burning Crusade Classic

• [With realm restarts] To address a bug that prevented Midsummer Fire Festival bonfire quests from resetting for players who previously completed them, all Midsummer bonfire quests will be reset. This includes any yearly quests that players might have completed for the first time since the event began at 12:01 a.m. on June 21.
  
  • Developers' note: This fix requires that we restart all realms, so to get the fix applied as soon as possible, we're preforming realm restarts soon during off-peak hours in each region.
    

Welcome to the Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta!
The team has been working hard to get Northrend ready for you to jump in and begin your adventures, and we’re excited to have you join us! Over the coming weeks we will post notes and updates in this forum with each new update to the Beta.

Beta Test Release Build 44301 - June 22, 2022

Level Cap: 76

Focus:

• Questing/Level-up Experience
• Northrend Zones
• Dungeons
• New Spells, Talents, and Abilities
• Death Knight Starting Experience
• New Systems and Features:
  
  • Revamped Group Finder
  • Vehicles
  • Quest phasing
  • Glyphs and Inscription
    Note: To facilitate Glyph testing, a Glyph Vendor has been placed in Dalaran, near the Inscription building.

The Wrath of the Lich King Classic beta test has begun! Over the course of the test, we’ll be inviting opt-in beta testers and more to check out the upcoming Classic expansion and give us feedback.

Players selected to participate in the beta test will receive an email invitation directing them to download the beta client directly from the Battle.net desktop app. As always, please be aware of phishing attempts—if you’re unsure whether your invitation is legitimate, please log in to your Battle.net account to verify that there is a Wrath of the Lich King Classic beta license attached (under Your Game Accounts).

If you haven't received an invite this time, don’t forget to sign up for the beta* for your chance to participate. Additional invite waves will happen as we get further into development.

Getting Started

If you’ve been selected to participate in the beta test, your Battle.net account will already be flagged for access.

• Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.
  
• Run the Battle.net desktop app—it may need to update itself if you haven’t run it recently. If you don’t have the app installed, get started here.
  
• Once Battle.net is installed and updated, select World of Warcraft from the list of games.
  
• In the Game Version drop-down menu above the Play button, choose the Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta (listed under In Development) option, then click Install.
  
• Allow installation to complete, click Play and select any of the available Test Servers.
  
• Create a new test character or copy over a character from your live Burning Crusade Classic account using the Copy Character button.
  
• Enter the game and test the content.

If you have issues installing and operating the Wrath of the Lich King beta, please check our Common Technical Issues and Solutions to begin troubleshooting.

Providing Feedback

We’d love to hear about your experiences in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, so once you’ve had a chance to play, please send us your feedback on the Wrath of the Lich King Classic beta forums, or follow the discussion on the WoW Community Council forums.

*Accounts must have an active World of Warcraft subscription or game time in order to be eligible for beta access selection.