World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Raid testing in the Burning Crusade Classic Beta is now underway, and we’ve received many answerable inquiries on every aspect of the game. What follows is an outline of the answers to many common questions about the Beta, which we will update as necessary over the coming weeks.

Attunements

• Attunements will function as they did when originally released.
• Original questlines will be required to enter each instance and purchasing Heroic dungeon keys will require Revered reputation.
• These attunement requirements will relax as the game progresses through its content phases.
  
  • For example, Karazhan should initially require attunement, but will no longer require attunement at a later phase. Thereafter, a group should still need the Master’s Key to open the gate.
  • Dungeon keys should be relaxed to require Honored reputation at a later phase.
• Throughout Burning Crusade Classic, we plan to make it so that progress on forthcoming raid attunements can be made before the opening of the raid the attunement is for.
  
  • For example, you should be able to start the Black Temple attunement for killing A’lar once The Eye is open, which will be before Black Temple is open.

Dungeons and Raids

• Original health and damage values will be used. These, as well as some mechanical changes, will then be adjusted in future phases. The original state for raids will persist throughout the phase during which it is current content. With the release of the next phase, adjustments will be made as they were in original Burning Crusade.
  
  • Exceptions will be considered. We’re looking forward to your feedback on adjustments during the testing of future PTRs.
• Buffs acquired from creatures and quests across Outland are purged upon entering an instance.
  
  • This does not apply to world buffs from the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor. Those auras cannot be obtained by player-characters above level 63.
• Ritual of Summoning will not work inside instances or Netherstorm.

Items

• Badges of Justice will not drop in raids until a later phase, however, Badge of Justice dailies will be available in all phases.
  
  • Developers’ notes: While these were both changes made late in original Burning Crusade, we feel that dailies provide healthy gameplay in encouraging dungeon variety, without significantly impacting gear acquisition.
• Primal Nether, Nether Vortex, and World boss items from Doomwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak will initially be Bind-on-Pickup, as they were in original Burning Crusade, and should be updated in a later phase.
• Primal Nether and Nether Vortex will become available from the Badge of Justice vendor at a later phase.
• Outland faction vendors will initially sell the items that they originally sold, and their offerings will update as content unlocks.
  
  • Examples: the Swift Skyfire Diamond gem recipe from the Consortium, the Mysterious ammo from Karazhan, and PvP gear from all factions.
• Ring enchants and Jewelcrafting-specific gems now have a profession requirement to benefit from them.
  
  • Developers’ notes: The design intent for these perks were a player power reward for having that profession, and the fact that they continued to function after unlearning that profession was a technical limitation in original Burning Crusade.
• Weapons that were changed from Main-Hand-only to One-Handed late in original Burning Crusade will be restored to their original version in Burning Crusade Classic, and should be updated in a later phase.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Changing these to One-Handed was a very late change in original Burning Crusade that would have a notable impact on player power.
• Epic engineering goggles will become available from trainers with the Tier 5 phase.
• Haris Pilton, Zephyr, and Cooking and Fishing dailies will be available from the beginning, as they do not directly or largely impact player power.
• Landro Longshot will not offer WoW Trading Card Game code redemption.
  
  • Developers’ notes: We don’t intend for the Burning Crusade Classic to make duplicate use of WoW TCG codes, nor do we want players who have unredeemed codes to choose between games for redemption. Landro Longshot may be repurposed in Burning Crusade Classic for a different use, but that will not be related to the WoW TCG.

Please feel free to post your feedback on any part of the Burning Crusade Classic Beta here in this forum. We greatly appreciate it!

In Shadowlands, we’ve been happy to see that the reintroduction of Honor, Conquest, and PvP gear vendors has been well-received by players. Nonetheless, we feel that there is still room for improvement. One piece of feedback we’ve heard repeatedly is that PvP gear needs something special for it to stand apart in PvP specific situations.

In an upcoming build of the Chains of Domination PTR, you will notice that all Season 2 PvP items have +13 item levels in PvP. This means that in PvP situations (such as battlegrounds, arenas, and war mode), the power of these items will increase by 13 item levels. Along with this, the baseline item level of these items will be reduced by 6 from where it would have otherwise been.

If this arrangement had been in place during Shadowlands Season 1, Duelist gear would have had a baseline item level of 220 and would have scaled up to item level 233 in Season 1 PvP.

What we want here is for the different endgame sources of gear to be viable in all content, while the very best gear for PvP generally comes from PvP activities, and the very best gear for raids and dungeons generally comes from raids and dungeons. We believe this small adjustment gets us closer to accomplishing that, while still allowing for plenty of crossover play between PvE and PvP.