World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

This week’s Beta and PTR builds include some updates for Marksmanship Hunters, notably their generation and spending of Focus, and updates to some of the more problematic talents.

In Battle for Azeroth, Rapid Fire’s focus generation and the Master Marksman talent increase the amount of available Focus you have a by a decent amount, which almost pushes Steady Shot’s Focus generation away from being necessary at all. Now:

• Aimed Shot Focus Cost increased to 35 (was 30).
• Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot Focus cost increased to 20 (was 15).
• Rapid Fire duration lowered to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds). Total damage dealt by Rapid Fire should be unchanged.

The above changes should cause you to spend a bit more Focus, and passively generate less from Rapid Fire.

Several talent changes are also coming to both prop up some underused talents, and replace others:

Level 15 Row:

• Redesigned: Master Marksman (Passive) – Your critical shots cause your target to bleed for 15% of the damage dealt over 6 seconds.
• Serpent Sting’s duration increased to 18 seconds (was 12 seconds).

Level 25 Row:

• Careful Aim has had the low health benefit removed as it felt redundant with Kill Shot returning. Additionally, the high health threshold has been lowered to 70% (was 80%).

Level 35 Row:

• Redesigned: Steady Focus – Casting Steady Shot twice in a row now increases your haste by 7% for 10 seconds.
• Redesigned: Streamline (Passive) – Rapid Fire damage is increased by 15%, and Rapid Fire now also reduces the cast time of your next Aimed Shot by 30%.
• Chimaera Shot now replaces Arcane Shot.
  
  • Chimaera Shot’s cooldown has been removed for Marksmanship Hunters. It has a Focus cost of 20.
  • Chimaera Shot should work with everything that Arcane Shot works with, such as Precise Shots, or any Torghast Power, or Legendary effect.
  • Chimera Shot no longer causes both the Frost and Nature attack to hit a single target. This is a bug fix.

Level 45 Row

• Lethal Shots proc chance has been increased to 30% (was 20%).

Level 50 Row

• Lock and Load’s proc chance has been increased to 8% (was 5%).

The above talent changes should open up some diversity in talent choices, and Chimaera Shot replacing Arcane shot opens up some alternate 2-target cleave options without increasing your action bar bloat.

Hello Mages. In this week’s build, we’ve made many changes to Arcane as well as a few updates to the other specs to address recent concerns about talents and GCD usage.

General Mage Changes

• Mirror Images damage greatly reduced, Frostbolt added to all Mirror Images, and while your images are active, damage taken is reduced by 20%. Taking direct damage will cause one of your images to dissipate.
  
  • Developers’ notes: The goal is to push Mirror Images away from a DPS cooldown and give it a defensive component. Now, only taking direct damage will cause an image to dissipate and there is an ICD of 2 seconds to ensure at least a 6 second uptime when taking damage.
• Rune of Power has been reworked to cast at your location when you use one of either Combustion, Arcane Power, or Icy Veins, depending on your spec.
  
  • Developers’ notes: This change is aimed to help with the cast time and GCD utilization at the beginning of an encounter, while remaining viable in your opener as a high burst window.

Arcane

The following Arcane changes are focused on reducing ramp up time, as well as opening up more talent options based on the content you’re running.

• Arcane Power cooldown reduced to 2 minutes (was 3 minutes).
• Touch of the Magi now generates 4 Arcane Charges on cast.
• New Talent: Master of Time – Reduces the cooldown of Alter Time by 30 seconds. Alter Time resets the cooldown of Blink when you return to your original location.
• Alter Time has been moved to Level 24 for Arcane mages.
• Resonance damage per target hit with Arcane Barrage increased to 15% (was 10%).
• Charged Up removed.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Touch of the Magi will now generate 4 charges baseline. This opens up the Level 35 tier for more viable options that focus heavily on dealing AoE damage.
• New Level 35 Talent: Arcane Echo – Direct damage you deal to enemies affected by Touch of the Magi, causes an explosion that deals [0.15xSP] Arcane damage to 8 nearby enemies.
• Time Anomaly now grants Time Warp for 6 seconds.
  
  • Developers’ notes: A simple change, but this should make Time Anomaly feel more satisfying as a talent since gaining Time Warp is always a good thing, but gaining Arcane Charges isn’t something you’d always necessarily want.

Fire

Fire updates are centered around the change that saw Phoenix Flames baseline as the Ignite spread.

• Phoenix Flames damage increased and recharge time reduced, but no longer guarantees critical hits.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Phoenix Flames still interacts with Hot Streak, so it can benefit within the Combustion window, but outside of that, it will primarily function as a way to spread your Ignite.
• Alexstrasza’s Fury – Dragon’s Breath now also gains a 50% increased critical strike damage bonus.
• New talent: From the Ashes – Increases Mastery by 2% for each charge of Phoenix Flames off cooldown, and your direct-damage critical strikes reduce its cooldown by 1 second.

Greetings Priests! In the latest build we have made some significant changes to Fae Blessings. We heard feedback that it wasn’t quite hitting the mark for a covenant ability, and we agree. In reworking this ability, we want to address Power Word: Shield, add a personal benefit to the spell, and make the spell more usable for Shadow Priests, while still keeping its identity as a powerful group support spell.

The ability is now named “Fae Guardians,” to better represent the new design, and to differentiate it from Blessing of the Seasons.

• Fae Guardians (1.5 minute cooldown) – Call forth three faerie guardians to attend your targets for 20 seconds.
  
  • Wrathful Faerie: Your direct attacks against the target restore 1% Mana or 6 Insanity. Follows your Shadow Word: Pain.
  • Guardian Faerie: Reduces damage taken by 10%. Follows your Power Word: Shield.
  • Benevolent Faerie: Increases the cooldown recovery rate of a major ability by 100%. Follows your Shadow Mend / Flash Heal.

Rather than using up charges, you can now manage 3 persistent Faerie buffs. Each Faerie can only exist on 1 target at a time. When you cast Fae Guardians, the Guardian and Benevolent Faerie will be summoned immediately on yourself. You can then cast Power Word: Shield to move the Guardian Faerie to your desired target, Shadow Mend to move the Benevolent Faerie, and Shadow Word: Pain to apply the Wrathful Faerie. Note that the Wrathful Faerie only restores mana or Insanity for the Priest, not their allies.

Our goal is to make the ability more flexible, require less maintenance, and provide fun gameplay for all three Priest specializations.

Please continue letting us know how this design feels, and thanks for all the feedback so far!

We have some significant updates in this week’s builds of the Beta and the PTR.

Elemental Shaman
The current version of Fulmination and Seismic Thunder in Shadowlands has a lot of different abilities generating a lot of different buffs, making things feel disjointed. In this Beta build, we’re removing Seismic Thunder entirely, and pushing more of the core abilities to interact with the Fulmination mechanic.

• Chain Lightning (and overloads) that strike two or more targets now generate one stack of Fulmination.
• Lava Burst (and overloads) now generate one stack of Fulmination.
• Earthquake’s cast time is reduced by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to a cap of 100% reduction (instant cast), and Earthquake’s damage is increased by 20% per stack of Fulmination, up to 160%. Earthquake now also consumes all stacks of Fulmination when cast.

The recent Totem Mastery redesign hasn’t turned out as well as we hoped, so we’ve scrapped that talent entirely and shuffled some talents around for Elemental Shaman:

• Elemental Blast has been moved to the level 25 row in place of Totem Mastery.
• Aftershock now only works from Earth Shock casts and no longer has any interaction with Earthquake
• Echoing Shock now only duplicates targeted damage or healing spells.

To replace the empty spot left by Elemental Blast on the level 15 row, we have added a new talent, Static Discharge.

• Static Discharge is an active ability with a 30 second cooldown that requires you to have Lightning Shield active. Using Static Discharge will cause some quick zaps of Nature damage to strike enemies over 3 seconds, prioritizing any target that is afflicted with your Flame Shock debuff.

Enhancement Shaman
We’re happy with the last big round of changes to Enhancement Shaman from a few weeks ago, but had a few talents that aren’t working out. Similar to Elemental, Totem Mastery has been replaced on the level 25 row, and the Cycle of the Elements talent has also been replaced on the level 35 row.

New level 25 talent: Ice Strike – 15 second cooldown. Strike your target for Frost damage, snaring them by 50% for 6 seconds. Ice Strike will also reset the cooldown of your Flame and Frost Shock spells.

New level 35 talent: Elemental Assault (passive) – Stormstrike deals 15% increased damage, and generates 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon.

On Thursday, August 13th and Friday, August 14th, we will be continuing our raid tests in Castle Nathria.

Once mythic testing has concluded on the 14th we will be opening the entire raid on normal difficulty for the remainder of the weekend.

Thursday, August 13th

Sun King’s Salvation - Mythic Castle Nathria
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Sludgefist - Mythic Castle Nathria
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

Friday, August 14th

Huntsman Altimor - Mythic Castle Nathria
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

The Council of Blood - Mythic Castle Nathria
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

Normal Castle Nathria Opens
16:00 PDT (19:00 EDT, 01:00 CEST)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

To facilitate testing, players who have not committed themselves to a Covenant can speak with Acquirer Ta’est inside Castle Nathria to temporarily bind themselves to one of the four factions.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: In Oribos, Dalaran, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade IV in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?
A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players’ effective level to 60 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested.

Q: How long does testing last?
A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we’re satisfied that we’ve received that information for a given boss, we’ll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

We appreciate you taking the time to test our content and look forward to reading your feedback.

During a special maintenance period (currently planned for 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PDT (10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, August 13), the following realm connections will be made:

• The Frostwolf and Vashj realms will join Drak’Tharon, Firetree, Malorne, Rivendare, Spirestone, and Stormscale .
• The Blackrock realm will join the Azjol-Nerub and Khaz Modan realms.
• The Garona realm will join the Icecrown and Malygos realms.
• The Bloodscalp, Boulderfist, Maiev, and Stonemaul realms will join the Quel’dorei and Sen’jin realms.
• Garrosh will join Aegwynn, Bonechewer, Daggerspine, and Hakkar.

We are planning more realm connections for low-population realms, and we will post further notifications like this one in the coming weeks.

Thank you!

There will be a special maintenance for the realms below on 13 August, from 9:00 p.m. CEST to 5:00 a.m.

• Azshara and Krag’jin will join Baelgun and Lothar.
• Tichondrius and Lordaeron will join Blackmoore.
• Frostmane will join Grim Batol and Aggra.
• Nethersturm and Alexstrasza will join Madmortem and Proudmoore.
• Al’Akir, Skullcrusher, and Xavius will join Burning Legion