World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

A few changes to Protection in an upcoming build. Mostly focused on smoothing out issues in the core rotation and active mitigation.

• Consecration no longer buffs Shield of the Righteous and Light of the Protector
• Consecration cooldown 4.5s (from 9s) and duration 12s (from 9s), but you can only have one down at once
• Mastery: Divine Bulwark reduces all damage you take while in Consecration (instead of increasing Shield of the Righteous effectiveness)
• Avenger's Shield increases the effects (damage and armor) of your next Shield of the Righteous by 20%
• Consecrated Hammer will be replaced with a new L15 talent

Listing all at once because they're all pieces of the same goals. First, Avenger's Shield is back to having some baseline defensive value, which pulls the rotation together by making you care about both hit and Hammer of the Righteous other than for pickups/damage.

Second, Consecration is easier to work with. If you don't have to move, you have to replace it less often, and if you do have to move, you can replace it much more quickly. While standing in Consecration still has some value, your core buttons no longer rely on it, and the loss of mitigation from being outside it is much smaller than Legion. It also provides a small source of baseline magic mitigation.

Finally, the gap between Shield of the Righteous uptime and downtime, in terms of mitigation, is less dramatic. The previous mastery made that gap get wider and wider as the expansion went on, leading to the problem of increasing moments of vulnerability when active mitigation was down. Shield of the Righteous will now have more consistent value across the expansion. The spec will be tuned expecting slightly lower Shield of the Righteous strength and uptime compared to Legion, which helps avoid the problem where there were windows of very poor mitigation compared to other tanks.

At the moment, there's some baseline compensation on Shadow Mend and Power Word: Shield, which were so often buffed by Grace in the situations where they were most important. The final amount that will be appropriate is still somewhat up in the air after all the changes (including having mastery affecting them). In any case, the main goal is that the ability to focus healing on one target shouldn't be so dependent on a specific talent. That was also a problem with L100 as it was. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Upcoming Changes
A few changes for an upcoming beta build.

• New talent: Sins of the Many. Your damage is increased by up to X%, diminishing for each ally with Atonement.
• Likely location is L75, pushing Lenience to L100, and removing Grace.

We agree with trying to find a talent that calls to having a smaller number of Atonements out, but are trying a version that still provides some benefit in all situations.

Grace's concept was generally subsumed by the new mastery (which is seeming successful so far), and stacking Grace on top of mastery led to huge variance in the strength of Shadow Mend and Power Word: Shield casts. Making that choice with mastery is a better place than making it with a talent that was essentially required in some types of content.

The talent rearrangement should leave L100 as a row of talents that most show their strength when effectively healing a large number of targets, and L75 as a row of talents less focused on that situation.

• Contrition's healing is increased by Power of the Dark Side

So that Power of the Dark Side remains neutral as to your choice of which mode of Penance to use.

• Mindbender's damage reduced 24%

It has been unintentionally strong ever since the squish, as many people have observed.

At the moment, there's some baseline compensation on Shadow Mend and Power Word: Shield, which were so often buffed by Grace in the situations where they were most important. The final amount that will be appropriate is still somewhat up in the air after all the changes (including having mastery affecting them). In any case, the main goal is that the ability to focus healing on one target shouldn't be so dependent on a specific talent. That was also a problem with L100 as it was. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Greetings friends,

This Thursday (May 24 PDT), we'll have a Play with the Blues event focusing on Alliance Warfronts. Members of the Blizzard WoW Development and WoW QA teams will be fighting alongside you all on the Anduin beta realm. Be on the lookout for characters in the guild.

Start Time: 3:00 p.m. PDT
End Time: 5:00 p.m. PDT
Realm: Anduin

How to queue for Warfronts:
1. Head to the Trade District in Stormwind.
2. Look for the War Table located outside of Trias' Cheese shop.
3. Interact with the table to queue up!

Reminder:
There are no level restrictions or prerequisite quests for Warfronts in the beta. If you'd like to participate, but only have a Horde character on Anduin (or no characters at all ... yet), all you need to do is create a fresh Alliance character, and you'll be good to go.

As testing continues in the Battle for Azeroth Beta, and we specifically consider the transition from Legion to BFA, we’ve decided to make the existing Keystone Master achievement permanent. There will not be a new achievement for completing a Mythic 15 or higher dungeon in the new expansion.

The artifact appearance associated with Keystone Master will still be available in Battle For Azeroth. Players can earn the achievement in Legion through August 13, or players can complete a Mythic 15 BFA dungeon at level 120, once Mythic Keystone difficulty opens a few weeks after the launch of Battle For Azeroth.

This means that the only artifact appearance that will become unobtainable with Battle For Azeroth is the Mage Tower base appearance.

As always, thank you for your feedback!

Join Jaina Proudmoore in “Reunion,” the first in a series of digital comics leading up to Battle for Azeroth.

As the Horde and the Alliance reckon with the aftermath of their war with the Burning Legion, Jaina finds herself doing some soul searching in the ruins of Theramore. Alone with the ghosts of the dead city, she reflects on a bitter past full of heartbreak and betrayal—and resolves to confront it with a return to her homeland of Kul Tiras.

We invite you to read and download the free comic here.


About

Written by Andrew Robinson and illustrated by Linda Cavallini and Emanuele Tenderini, “Reunion” is the first in a series of comics leading up to Battle for Azeroth.

Andrew Robinson is a senior writer on Blizzard Entertainment’s creative development team, where he helps build and expand upon the fiction of our universes through comics, cinematics, and more. He started at Blizzard in 2014 as a writer focusing on animation projects, and has written and consulted for more than 30 animated TV shows over the course of his full career.

Linda Cavallini is an Italian freelance illustrator who has worked on various children’s illustrated books since 2008. She is currently on working on the fantasy/sci-fi comic Lumina with Emanuele Tenderini through their publishing house Tatai Lab, which they established in 2015.

Emanuele Tenderini is an Italian comic book artist who began his career at various French publishers. He later worked with famed Italian comic book writer and publisher Sergio Bonelli before forming Tatai Lab in 2015 with Linda Cavallini.

Looks like the requirement to level characters from both faction to max and run quest lines with each is staying (not a bug). It's still an after patch and the devs won't respond for clarification on it on the forums or on twitter. Looks like you're gonna have to have to max level grind out achievements on 2 characters (different factions) in order to get flight in bfa. Kinda sucks for those who pre-ordered and used that character boost already.
Just some clarification on this, you do not need both factions for Pathfinder Part 1. You will only need either Horde or Alliance side.

North America Can't Bust The Move

With the Spring Finals in the books the teams from North America are looking to regroup and take on the challenge of the summer season in the Arena World Championship. The first North American Cup would set the tone.

Method Orange Falter Early and Regroup

Method Orange were the top seed in North America at the Spring Finals but the road to the top was cut short in the first round where they dropped to Reformed and XRB. Coming into the summer, Method had a lot of work to do to retain their crown in NA, and got off to a poor start, falling to Super Rejects 3-1 in the upper bracket of the double-elimination tournament. Method then went on a lower bracket run beating everyone to get to the final versus The Move, a run that included overcoming Super Rejects.

The Rejects Can’t Keep the Spring Finals Level

The Rejects, now known as Noble were the most improved team at the Spring Finals and finished with the silver medal. Coming back to North America, the question was whether the Spring Finals were a fluke, and Noble did nothing to disprove that theory. With a first round loss to Method Orange followed by an elimination at the hands of Super Rejects, Noble have a lot of work to do to recapture the form they showed at the Spring Finals. Noble came in with a variety of compositions including a slower RMP as well as some more aggressive cleave compositions. This is in stark contrast to the RMP that the then-The Rejects used during most of the Spring Finals.

Sneakier Snakes are Still Sneakily good

The Sneakier Snakes were one of the bottom teams at the Spring Finals, going two-and-out just like Method Orange. Now playing in the summer season as Kaska’s Angels, they wanted to show they had what it takes to stay at the top of North America, with their only losses coming at the hands of The Move and Method Orange. Losing 3-0 to both might not be inspiring but Kaska’s Angels are looking to stay in the top four with that third-place finish and quietly hang around the top of North America.

The Move Back With a Vengeance

The Move did not make the Spring Finals, finishing eight points below Sneakier Snakes for a disappointing 5th place. Coming back from that disappointment, The Move showed a dominant performance in the first North American AWC Cup of the summer season. With a 3-0 win over Plot Twist, Super Frogs, and Kaska’s Angels, The Move ended up facing Method Orange in the grand final. In an incredibly tight game that included taking a nail-biting series to Game 7 in the Blade’s Edge Arena, The Move took the series 4-3 and secured their first win of the AWC as they look to tighten up the rankings with an eye towards BlizzCon.

Whether The Move can sustain this level of play will be up in the air for the next two weeks with the AWC moving back to Europe for the second European cup. Method Black and Reformed will be looking to stay on top of those regional standings and supercharging the debate over which team is the world’s best.

Mage Tower Quest Line
So i have completed the Gift from the six quest line as a demonology but my gear is for affliction is it possible to get the affliction mage tower quest whitout completing demonology's quest first.
Each spec will have it's own questline, and you can have all three in progress as long as you meet the criteria for them (having the base 35 traits unlocked in that specs Artifact)

You actually have the Affliction questline already, "Message from the Shadows"

Carry on with that one and you'll be able to get through to the Mage Tower Challenge for this spec too. (Official Forums)