World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Season 3 will begin with the weekly reset the week of January 17.

Looking back at Season 2, we’ve analyzed the queue data and found that some queue times are taking longer than we’d like to see. To address this, in Season 3:

• The range of possible opponents will be expanded. This will help match players of different matchmaking levels more quickly. As before, teams with similar ratings who queue at the same will be prioritized to match against each other.

Additionally, we’re making the following changes:

• Mind Quickening Gem now provides 100 Haste Rating (was 330).
• Starting with Season 3, the following items won’t be allowed inside Arenas:
  
  • Nigh-Invulnerability Belt
  • Net-o-Matic Projector
  • Dazzling Longsword
  • Silent Fang
  • Skull of Impending Doom

Hey folks! Now that the latest PTR build is out, wanted to give some updates on the future of Death Knight’s sets + tuning, by spec.

As a general disclaimer, tuning for Tier Sets as a feature is happening across all classes asynchronously, so while it may feel to you that some sets are being buffed/nerfed unjustly, our intention is to hit the same target across the board - while there will naturally be variance, this means that comparing future plans detailed in this post to classes that have yet to receive tuning or more recently received an update to their functionality isn’t super productive. Let’s start with the good news!

• Unholy

This set’s update just hit PTR this week finally, and so far it seems like it’s being well received. As some of you may have noticed, the 4-piece is a little different than the one posted a while back, but overall seeks to keep an Execute theme to set while not tying the entirety of the set’s power to just those windows.

There’s unlikely to be any major updates left beyond tuning from here on in, but one change that will be coming (hopefully in the next update) is a change to make the 2-piece only stack Harvest Time on Scourge Strikes/Clawing Shadows that cause Festering Wounds to burst. This is to address the feedback that while in your execute window, you just mash Scourge Strike/Clawing Shadows without any regards for Unholy’s core gameplay, which would feel unsatisfying but necessary to perform optimally.

Overall, interested to see how this one performs now that Raid Testers can get their hands on it, and will be seeing tuning after it’s had some time to sit.

• Blood

Coming in the next update will be a change aimed at addressing how Blood’s set performs in Solo Tanking/Raid Content (where you are only tanking a fraction of the time, and the amount parryable attacks is often not under your control) and how it performs in Mythic+ / AoE tanking, where it performs far better. The change (which is also being applied similarly to Protection Paladin’s set, as they have a similar bonus & dichotomy) reads:

‘Whenever you take damage, your weapon has a chance equal to your parry chance to lash out, Heart Striking your attacker. Dancing Rune weapon now summons 2 Rune Weapons.’

This change has a few advantages, like still triggering when you’re not the main tank (but still in range), and triggering more often vs certain enemy types and bosses that wouldn’t have been affected previously, like those that predominantly cast spells. This change will also ship with a higher internal cooldown than it previously had (because of how often it’ll activate, and frankly because y’all already had a bug that let you solo entire dungeons once this cycle already), but like all bonuses is subject to tuning.

Lastly, there’s still an issue we’re tracking down not allowing the 4-piece’s Heart Strike to function as an actual Heart Strike, which has proven a bit trickier to fix than intended - this will also represent a pretty significant power increase, as they’ll be able to interact with the 2-piece’s strength stacking as well as generate Runic Power.

• Frost

Lastly, the bad news. The proposed bonus we talked about last time has proven to be a lot more difficult to implement than we’d hoped, and considering Frost has a functional & balanced 2-piece, it’s been hard to prioritize solving it over focusing our efforts and dev time on more critical elements of the patch. At the risk of leading you on, there is a chance a new bonus could be considered on the conditions that 1) the aforementioned elements are finished with time to spare and 2) we have the QA resources to support testing it later on, which isn’t a non-zero chance, but the more-than-likely outcome is what’s currently on PTR will stay without major overhaul for 9.2’s launch.

To reiterate from a previous post - Frost’s set is exactly on-target for our tuning goals at the moment, and any rework or update would be to repackage that same power level in a potentially more interesting fashion, so this isn’t a concern that Frost Death Knights will have a ‘bad’ or undertuned set. Regardless, we know for those of you that were looking forward to testing it that this news is disappointing, but it felt better to give you a transparent look at the why & how rather than to stay silent and cause further harm & expectations down the road.

So TL;DR - a power-neutral update will be coming for Unholy to fix a rotation issue during Execute, Blood’s being updated to smooth out the best and worst cases, and Frost is likely to stay as-is. After the next update where Blood & Unholy are updated, it’s likely that these posts will become less frequent (and certainly less lengthy) as we’ll be moving into the stages of reacting to feedback with smaller, mostly numerical tweaks to hit our final tuning targets before it’s ready to go.

I want to say thanks to all the Death Knights who’ve been instrumental in shaping these sets into what they’ll be in the future, both in your testing and the effort it takes to document bugs and write-up informative posts. Have a great week!

The next content update for Burning Crusade Classic, The Black Temple, will be available on the week of January 17. The following week, on January 27, both raid instances (The Battle for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple) as well as a new daily quest hub will be available worldwide. Read on for more information on what is coming,

On the week of January 17:

Incubus Warlock pet

Warlocks will be able to take part on a new quest to learn how to summon a variant Succubus pet—the Incubus.

A New PvP Season Begins

• At the start of this new PvP Season, Arena Season 3 gear will be available from Arena vendors in Shattrath and Nagrand.
  
• Arena Season 2 gear will be available at a discount from Area 52 vendors and will no longer require Arena rating to purchase.
  
• Arena Season 1 gear will be available from Honor vendors in the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar and Champion's Hall in Stormwind.

On January 27:

New Raid: The Battle for Mount Hyjal

Preserve the outcome of the pivotal Battle for Mount Hyjal and ensure the demon Archimonde meets his fate.

• Raid bosses: 5 (Rage Winterchill, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Archimonde)
• Level: 70
• Location: Caverns of Time, Tanaris

Players must be attuned to enter the instance. Read about the attunement process below. Improve your standing with the Scale of the Sands to earn rewards from Indormi in the Caverns of time.

New Raid: The Black Temple

Defeat the Betrayer himself—Illidan Stormrage—atop the Black Temple.

• Raid bosses: 9 (High Warlord Naj'entus, Supremus, Shade of Akama, Teron Gorefiend, Gurtogg Bloodboil, Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz, The Illidari Council, Illidan Stormrage)
• Level: 70
• Location: The Black Temple, Shadowmoon Valley

Players must be attuned to enter the instance. Read about the attunement process below. Improve your standing with the Ashtongue Deathsworn to earn rewards from Okuno inside the Black Temple.

Epic Gems

• Epic gem Jewelcrating Designs will be available from Indormi in the Caverns of Time
  
• Epic gems can be obtained from Battle for Mount Hyjal through mining (requires 375 mining skill), and as rare drops from Black Temple

Netherwing daily quest hub

• Earn Netherwing reputation through daily quests in Shadowmoon Valley
  
• Collect Netherwing eggs to speed up reputation gains
  
• Epic Netherdrake mounts will be available to players that reach Exalted reputation (requires Artisan Riding skill)

Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep Loot

Bosses in those instances will drop one additional class set token for a total of 3

Complete the Battle for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple Attunements

Those who want to brave the two new raid instances must complete the required attunement quests first. The required quests must be completed once per character.

Battle for Mount Hyjal Attunement: Gaining entry to the Hyjal Summit

To access the Battle for Mount Hyjal, you must first travel to the Caverns of Time in Tanaris and find Soridormi. Soridormi will offer the quest “The Vials of Eternity” to those who are at least Revered with the Keepers of Time. You can earn reputation with the Keepers of Time in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills and Black Morass dungeons in the Caverns of time.

Complete the quest "The Vials of Eternity" by defeating Kael'thas Sunstrider in Tempest Keep and Lady Vashj in Serpentshine Cavern and you will be attuned to the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid.

Black Temple Attunement: Gaining entry to the Black Temple

To earn a chance to face Illidan Stormrage, travel to Shadowmoon Valley and seek out Anchorite Ceyla at the Altar of Sha'tar (for the Aldor) or Arcanist Thelis at the Sanctum of the Stars (for the Scryers). Complete the following quests:

• Tablets of Baa'ri
  
• Oronu the Elder
  
• The Ashtongue Corruptors
  
• The Warden's Cage
  
• Proof of Allegiance
  
• Akama
  
• Seer Udalo
  
• A Mysterious Portent
  
• The Ata'mal Terrace
  
• Akama's Promises
  
  • After completing "Akama's Promise", the quest chain continues inside the Serpentshrine Cavern raid instance in Coilfang Reservoir (Zangarmarsh). Look for Seer Olum after defeating Fathom-Lord Karathress to pick up the next quest.
    
• The Secret Compromised
  
• Ruse of the Ashtongue
  
• An Artifact From the Past
  
  • “An Artifact From the Past” requires entry into the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid. The attunement quest for that raid must be completed in order to gain entry to the Black Temple.
    
• The Hostage Soul
  
• Entry into the Black Temple
  
• A Distraction for Akama

Completing "A Distraction for Akama" will award you the Medallion of Karabor, which allows its wearer entry into the Black Temple.

The Betrayer awaits those foolish enough to face him. You are not prepared. . . .