World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Hello!

As everyone knows, expectations about how PvP gearing should play out during a player’s initial gearing-up phase each Season have shifted from expansion to expansion, and we’ve seen a lot of those expectations even shift from patch to patch, especially since the end of Legion. When we set about working on 9.1.5 from a PvP perspective, it was very clear that players want the gearing-up phase to be shorter and the staircase of power that PvP gear represents to be less-steep. So we did just that in 9.1.5 and then saw mountains of feedback from PvPers that you wanted it to be even shorter and even less-steep. By a lot! Players who posted in those threads were, in a word, unhappy.

(We also spotted some feedback about 9.1.5 that looked very positive on the changes we made. Please don’t think we didn’t see you!)

And to cut to the chase on that subject: the item level upgrade via rating tiers has to stay in place as it is currently works for the rest of this Season. We’re committed to keeping some consistency around such things in the middle of a Season.

Post-Legion PvP, and really the entire game, is different than it was pre-Legion. We’re striving to make a PvP gearing system that balances character progression with fairness, rewarding players who improve over the course of the season with noticeable power increases that can be overcome through skillful play.

We believe that the current arrangement – using PvP item level – has reduced the power gaps between players to reasonable amounts that make for fulfilling games where your team usually has a good chance to defeat your opponents in Arenas and Battlegrounds. You can get started quickly, and perform adequately, with Honor gear but still experience noticeable power increases as you acquire and upgrade your Conquest gear.
Nonetheless, with each passing Season, we’ve heard loud and clear that players think it takes too long to gear up for PvP. As far as we can see, it looks like the best way for us to address that concern immediately would be to add a significant Honor increase (40%) to the Spoils of War buff that is currently in place. So we’re looking into doing that soon.

Thank you for your feedback, and also, thank you to everyone who provided valuable feedback on this to us in previous forum threads, such as the massive thread in the 9.1.5 PTR forum. It may take us some time to formulate an answer, but we do see your feedback every day.

Dungeons and Raids

• Timewalking
  
  • Mage Tower
    
    • Guardian Druid
      
      • The change made to the Nether Horror's ability to cast while moving has been reverted.
        
        • Developers’ note: When we were looking into Guardian Druid difficulty we thought that by making the Nether Horrors stop to cast their spell we'd make it a little easier by creating some more time to react to them; but it turns out we were wrong and we made it harder. So, we're reverting that change to back to the way it was (which is once again identical to the way it was in Legion).
          
    • Holy Priest
      
      • Corrupted Risen Soldier damage reduced by 30%.
        
  • Timeworn Mythic+
    
    • Eye of Azshara
      
      • Players can now interrupt Binder Ashioi's Magic Binding spell.
        
    • Vault of the Wardens
      
      • Tirathon Saltheril
        
        • Darkstrikes damage reduced by 25%.
          

Items and Rewards

• [With realm restarts] Various trinkets from Legion dungeons now split their damage between all enemies struck, and deal increased damage for each enemy struck, up to 5 enemies. Additionally, their damage has also been increased. Tooltips will be updated in a future patch to reflect the new functionality.
  
  • The following trinkets damage increased by 50%:
    
    • Windscar Whetstone
      
    • Giant Ornamental Pearl
      
    • Corrupted Starlight
      
    • Caged Horror
      
  • The following trinket's damage increased by 500%:
    
    • Mark of Dargrul
      
• [With realm restarts] Gems found in Burning Crusade Heroic dungeons now scale properly with character level.
  
• [With realm restarts] Fixed a scaling issue with several Legacy weapon modifications (sharpening stones, weightstones, and enchantments such as Major Striking) that added flat damage to weapons, causing these modifications to be much more powerful than intended.

WoW Classic Era and Season of Mastery

• Trash Blade, Carrot on a Stick, and Rune of the Guard Captain are now Unique-Equipped items.
  
  • Developers’ note: The ability for players to get another copy of Trash Blade, Carrot on a Stick, or Rune of the Guard Captain was meant to exist only as a means to restore a lost or deleted iconic quest reward without contacting Customer Support. Equipping two copies of the item was unintentional.
    If you had two copies of these items equipped, the second copy should be pushed into your inventory. If you happen to have a full inventory at the time of this change and the item is missing, if you free up an inventory slot and log in and out of the game then the missing item will reappear in the open slot.