World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

CLASSES

• Druid
  
  • Guardian
    
    • Ursine Adept’s damage reduction now only applies to Druids in Bear Form.

ITEMS AND REWARDS

• Gladiator’s Emblem on-use health reduced by 30%.

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

• Fixed an issue that caused many absorption spells from soulbinds, conduits, and covenant abilities to ignore the healing reduction from Dampening and Focused/Brutal Assault.
• Priest
  
  • Shadow
    
    • New PvP Talent: Void Volley – Upon entering Voidform, send a slow-moving bolt of Shadow energy at a random location every 0.5 second for 3 seconds, dealing Shadow damage to all targets within 8 yards and causing them to flee in horror for 3 seconds.

Are you ready to rumble? Burning Crusade Arena Season 1 has begun calling forth the finest combatants in all of Outland to converge and compete in three arenas—Ring of Trials in Nagrand, the Circle of Blood in Blade’s Edge Mountains, and the Ruins of Lordaeron above Undercity. Up for grabs are gear, mounts, title rewards, and most importantly—immortal glory. Step into the arena, champion, and test your mettle.

If you’re not familiar with how the Arena system works, read our article on the honor system updates for Burning Crusade Classic.

Entering the Arena

Once you have your team of 2, 3, or 5 players ready, you can queue for arenas by talking to an Arena Battlemaster. All Arena Teams begin at 0 team rating and must climb their way through the ranks. Communication and coordination is key!

In Season 1, certain PvP items will have personal rating requirements to purchase in addition to their Arena point cost. Once purchased, even if your personal rating drops below the threshold, you’ll still be able to equip it. The rating requirements are as follows:

• Shoulders require 2000 personal rating
  
• Weapon requires 1850 personal rating

Arena points—the currency required to purchase Arena gear—are awarded during the weekly reset and are based on the team that earned the most points. To qualify for Arena points, your personal rating must be within 150 of the rating of your team, with at least 10 games played, and you must have participated in 30% of your team’s games the previous week.

Obtaining Arena Gear

Once you earn Arena points, various vendors will make their wares available to you. Travel to the Ring of Trials in Nagrand, Circle of Blood in Blade's Edge Mountains, or Area 52 in Netherstorm to find them.

Seasonal Rewards

At the end of each Arena season, eligible players get rewards based on their rating. Season 1 features a unique title—the “Infernal Gladiator”— and players who reach the top of the bracket in their region will receive seasonal rewards as follows:

• Infernal Gladiator (Top 0.1%)
  
• Gladiator (Top 0.5%)
  
• Duelist (Top 0.5% – 3%)
  
• Rival (Top 3% – 10%)
  
• Challenger (Top 10% – 35%)

In addition, recipients of the Infernal Gladiator and Gladiator titles will also receive a Swift Nether Drake mount—an extremely fast flying mount only available during Season 1.

To qualify for a seasonal reward, your personal arena rating needs to be within 100 points of your team’s rating, and you must have participated in 20% of your team’s games.

Players will need to win at least 50 games to qualify for a seasonal reward. Once a season has ended and a new one begins, the previous season's Arena gear can be purchased without the requirement of a specific rating.

The Arenas await you. It’s time to earn your place among legends, champion.

Burning Crusade Classic

• Priest’s Prayer of Mending now displays on the Raid-style party frames.
• The Alliance now receive the correct amount of bonus honor in Eye of the Storm.
• Flag captures in Eye of the Storm no longer grant bonus honor, true to 2.4.3 behavior.
• The Jewelcrafting design patterns for Don Julio's Heart and Crimson Sun are now available on Consortium vendors.
• Fixed an issue where Rested would sometimes become active outside of a rest area.
• Fixed an issue where quest givers can fail to offer the Call to Arms daily if it was for Arathi Basin.

Take your Mythic+ skills to the next level. Chains of Domination introduces a way for players to clearly gauge their success and preparation to take on the challenges found in Mythic+ dungeons.

Keying Up to Bigger Challenges
With the content update players can take charge of their own progress and see how well they’re performing in Mythic+ dungeons by viewing their personal Mythic+ rating within the Group Finder(I) UI under the Mythic+ Dungeons tab.

Hovering your mouse pointer over the center Dungeon rating will bring up a tooltip that explains more about your rating and how you can improve it.


Your Rating increases each time you run a dungeon you haven’t completed before or when you beat your own best time in a dungeon you have already completed. Completing a key provides a rating based on three factors—the level of the key, the Affixes in the key, and the run’s time compared to the dungeon’s timer. With each Season, Mythic+ ratings are reset in the display.

Hovering over each dungeon will display the rating for that dungeon and your best time for both Fortified and Tyrannical.

Finding Your Group
Visibility is key in finding the right group for players looking for a group and for those creating a group as a group leader. When searching through Premade Groups in the Dungeon Finder, players will be able to view the group leader’s Mythic+ Rating for the dungeon before deciding if they want to apply to join.


Group leaders will be able to view all the incoming applicant’s Mythic+ Rating and their dungeon specific rating before accepting them into the group.


Maximizing Your Rating
Completing a dungeon once shows that you’ve learned the ropes and earns you a large boost to your overall Mythic+ Rating immediately. For the masters of keystones, running each dungeon on both Tyrannical and Fortified will maximize your Mythic+ Rating as you work your way through the system.

Taking the Win
When players beat the timer, they’ll see a notification that shows the amount their Keystone has been upgraded and the reward they’ve earned such as an increase to their Mythic+ Rating.

As an additional bonus to the group, if anyone in the group improves their rating on a run, everyone will earn bonus Valor Points, so don’t be shy about helping others get a leg up while helping boost your own rating too!


With this new scoring system in place, there are no limits on how far you can go in Mythic+ dungeons.