World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

World of Warcraft Patch 8.8.8 Build 88888 WORK IN PROGRESS


April 1, 2020

Tech writer note – looking for edits from all producers and team leads here. Please get back to us by EOD tomorrow, and please don’t leak this doc like one of you leaked all the new professions. Oof.

NEW FEATURES

TERRIFIC VISIONS

Now that N’Zoth is vanquished and all of Azeroth’s problems are solved forever, players will delve into future-looking scenarios that offer a new way of helping Azeroth’s champions see past the old god. With LACEC (Light Assisted Corruption Eradication Conversion), you’ll use Titan technology to step into a look at what the future might hold after everyone stops fighting.

In Terrific Visions, you’ll keep an eye on your Vanity meter while enjoying all that life has to offer. If your Vanity runs out, you’ll be forced to read Torn Pages from N’Zoth’s Diary. For example:

I am an Old God in this lonely city.
I think about sad things; no one calls me pretty.
“My name is N’Zoth” I scrawled over there.
I never meant for ME to feel this despair.

NEW ALLIED RACES

HIGH DWARVES

The long wait is finally over, and the much-requested High Dwarves are finally coming to Azeroth. There’s not really more to say about the glory of the High Dwarves that hasn’t already been said in the General Discussion forum.

MECHATAUREN

Moooove over, all you Horde races who are cursed with flesh. We’re about to raise the steaks on the udderly fantastic notion of Tauren+mechanical bioengineering. Don’t worry, we wouldn’t steer you wrong.

KUL TIRAN WORGEN


HIGHMOUNTAIN GOBLIN


NEW MYTHIC KEYSTONE DUNGEON AFFIXES

New affix: Legit Questioning – Within 3-5 minutes of each boss kill, 30 to 50 feral hogs run into your dungeon. How do you kill them?

New affix: Tub Thumping – With each pull, you get knocked down. But don’t worry—you’ll get up again. We’re never gonna keep you down.

NEW ESSENCE

Now, the most-accomplished and powerful players – those who do a significant amount of pet battling every single day for many consecutive days – can obtain Vision of Furrpection .

Major Power – Reflects all incoming damage. This effect scales with the number of max-level battle pets you have in your collection, to a maximum duration of 30 seconds, with a 60 second cooldown.

Minor Power– You enter stealth after standing still for 2 seconds. Thereafter, moving does not break stealth.

Developers’ note: We haven’t yet completed our tuning pass on this Essence, but we wanted to get it into players’ hands as soon as possible. We’re really looking forward to seeing if players find a use for it.

NEW MICRO-HOLIDAY: MOTHER’S DAY

She’s cared for you through so many difficulties. Now, it’s your turn to show your appreciation for her. Please make a note on the in-game calendar and actually show up for this easy quest chain. You only have to do it once per year, and it means so much to MOTHER.

NEW MICRO-HOLIDAY: MAGNI-FICENT TRAVELS

For one day only, Magni is just going to go wherever he wants and it’s up to you to find your own way there. Magni might lead you to visit your bodyguard in Nazjatar who’s kind of lonely now. He might want to go pull some pranks. When you finally get to him, have fun! Set the Stormwind Park back on fire or something.

CHANGES

CORRUPTION EFFECTS

• Infinite Stars has to be renamed, because every time we reduce Infinite Stars by 20%, we’re left with Infinite Stars. Even just pondering it gives us headaches. How about “Many Countable Stars”?
• Echoing Void no longer sounds like a car alarm between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. when people are trying to sleep over here!
• Ineffable Truth can’t be changed.
• Twisted Appendage has been given an additional twin tentacle: Twisted Sister.
• Gushing Wound has been reduced to gush 20% less than it gushed before.

ESSENCES

• Worldvein Resonance now hurts your ears 20% less.
• Memory of Lucid Dreams is now 10% more memorable.
• Conflict and Strife is now only obtainable through Fishing.
• Vitality Conduit now yells at you in the voice of Shia LaBeouf to “Just Duit!!”
• Vision of Furrpection has been renamed and is now called Furrification Protocollar.

MISCELLANEOUS CHANGES

• After receiving a great amount of negative sentiment having something to do with the Big Love Rocket mount, we’ve decided to make the Big Love Rocket mount 50% larger, and give it a 200% speed boost. Thank you for your feedback.
• Tortollan scribes are so very tired of watching you stumble around, that their standards have been lowered by 90%. Draw whatever shape you want. Go nuts. Just finish and get out of here.
• All bells have been removed from the game. We’re not sure why, but some raccoon showed up, said something about a house, and ran off with them.
• Essence of Fire, Essence of Water, Essence of Earth, and Essence of Undeath are no longer account-wide.

Classes

Death Knight

• Death Grip never really did what it says and cause death, rather than mere inconvenience to the target, so Death Grip has been renamed Tug Throat.
• Now that everyone is a Death Knight, we’ve added a new Death Knight ability: Directory – activate to hold up a chart that you can compare other players to, in order to figure out what race they are.

Demon Hunter

• New ranged DPS spec: Tizzy. With a Tizzy DH, you’ll still jump around and make funny noises like there’s a bee on you, but you’ll do it from 40 yards away.
• Eye Beam has been given those new high-intensity bulbs, and now blinds everyone in front of you for miles.

Druid

• Added a new Druid ability: White Claw – disorients you and frustrates your enemies. It shows up everywhere, even though you’ve never once heard anyone say that they like it.
• Shaking a Druid while in Tree of Life form now has a chance to spawn a swarm of angry wasps.

Hunter

• Beast Mastery Hunters whose pets do 70% or more of the player’s total damage are now given a comfy bench to sit on during fights.
• Freezing Trap is now 30% less effective on targets who keep a sweater at the office.

Mage

• Mages who say in voices comms that they’re putting down a portal to Boralus, but then it’s actually a portal to Dalaran Crater, are awarded the Achievement “Why Do They Fall For This Every Time?”.
• Blink distance reduced by 50%. You guys really need to tone it down with the Blinking. It’s gotten out of hand. Don’t make us turn this Blink around and go right back where we came from! Stop Blinking! I’ll give you something to Blink about!!

Monk

• Ironskin Brew and Purifying Brew are now noticeably less hoppy than they were a few years ago during the hops craze.
• New Mastery: Savasana. All Monks have transcended to an elevated state of being, where the answers to all problems are beyond the need for violence. Monk characters are prevented from casting any damage-dealing abilities or using any attacks whatsoever. Namaste.

Paladin

• Lay on Hands no longer causes your hands to get all tingly and numb and then you wake up and shake them and they feel so weird.
• Divine Steed updated to look less like you’re just running away from a fight, except when followed by the use of Divine Shield and Hearthstone.

Priest

• Xal’atath, Blade of the Black Empire voicelines updated in the hopes that you’ll start using it again. You used to be so close and nowadays you barely even see each other. Baby please come back.
• Corrected an issue that would occasionally cause Holy Word: Serenity to take the sky from you.

Rogue

• Rogues who save their Sap can now make it into a nice syrup.
• Rogues who use Cloak of Shadows, Vanish, and Shadowstep in rapid succession now disappear from the game altogether.

Shaman

• No adjustments needed.

Warlock

• Seed of Corruption must now be planted in the correct time of year and moisture, or else it will become Flowerpot of Disappointment.
• Doom duration increased to be a really long time, but not so long that you’d call it eternal.

Warrior

• Heroic Leap now occasionally ends in a pirouette.
• Pummel now looks even more misspelled if you stare at it.

WoW CLASSIC

Following a tremendous amount of feedback, we’re happy to announce that WoW Classic now comes in three new old flavors:

• WoW ORANGE VANILLA
• CHERRY WoW CLASSIC
• DIET DR. CLASSIC

There are no changes to WoW Classic in this patch.

Dungeons and Raids

• Ashvane Warden
  
  • The ground visual for Lockdown should remain visible when Projected Textures is disabled in the System Settings menu.

Items and Rewards

• Legion Raids and Dungeons
  
  • [With regional restarts] Legacy loot rules are now in place for Legion raids and dungeons.
    
    • Developers’ note: Standard encounters drop an amount of loot scaled by the amount of players in the raid, which results in fewer pieces for players who defeated encounters in small groups or as a solo player. In Legacy loot rules, raid and dungeon encounters will drop a fixed quantity of class-agnostic loot, regardless of the group size.

With scheduled weekly maintenance the week of March 31, we’re enabling Legacy loot rules in Legion raids and dungeons.

We’re reached that point in an expansion where the content from the previous expansion no longer requires a full group, and the rewards are primarily sought by transmog collectors. With this change, Legion raid and dungeon encounters will drop a fixed quantity of class-agnostic loot. Today, if you and one other player enter Emerald Nightmare on Mythic difficulty and kill Nythendra, it’s unlikely that you’ll receive any loot, since drop rates normally scale to the number of players. After this change, Nythendra will always drop 5 items from her loot table, regardless of your group size.

Dungeons and many of the lower-difficulty raid bosses in Legion are already soloable by well-equipped Battle for Azeroth characters, though some bosses, especially on Mythic difficulty, may still require you to bring a few friends. Nonetheless, this should amount to a great increase in the availability of Legion transmog gear.

See you there!

Chart a course across Kul Tiras and Zandalar for this week’s Bonus Event – World Quests.

This Week

All week, open your map (default hotkey-"m") and select any of the Kul Tiras or Zandalar regions to view the World Quests available to you. To find out more about each World quest, simply hover your mouse over a World Quest on the map to see what tasks are needed to complete it, the rewards you’ll receive, and the time remaining that the quest is available to you.

Look for the following all week long:

• Chronicler Toopa in Boralus or Chronicler Shoopa in Zuldazar has a quest for you—The World Awaits. You can also start the quest from within the Adventure Guide (Shift-J).
  
  • Quest requirement: Complete 20 World Quests in Kul Tiras, Zandalar, Mechagon, or Nazjatar
    
  • Reward: 1,000 War Resources
    
• Passive buff: +50% to Reputation gains from World Quests

If you’ve been looking to impress some emissaries, this is the week to do it!

Every Week

The Bonus Events system consists of a rotating schedule of different activities, currently scheduled to run each week beginning on Tuesdays. Each Bonus Event grants a passive bonus to a particular game activity and offers a once-per-event quest with a noteworthy reward for accomplishing a related goal. The in-game calendar can serve as your one-stop reference for the event schedule. The Adventure Guide also offers a direct link to active Bonus Events, allowing you to easily accept any associated quests.

Jump into Arathi Basin for a head-to-head battle against AI opponents during Comp Stomp— running March 31–April 7.