World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’re working on a hotfix today that will cause all tank specializations to now generate additional threat, via increases granted at each of the three Essence slot unlocks.

At each of the three Essence slot unlocks, damage-dealing specializations are gaining an increase in their damage output that is substantial enough to sometimes unintentionally disrupt tanking. This change should keep threat generation, relative to DPS, on par with where it was earlier in the expansion.

Sharpen your swords and reinforce your boards, because you’re called to the PvP Arena for the hectic mayhem of Skirmishes.

This Week: Arena Skirmishes
All week, from anywhere in Azeroth, open the Group Finder (default hotkey: i), select the Player vs. Player tab on the bottom of the window, and then under Casual, choose Arena Skirmish and JOIN BATTLE. You’ll be matched up with teammates and provided with opponents to kill in the Arena. You can also queue for a Premade group or create your own group within the Premade tab.

Look for the following all week long:

• Chronicler Shoopa in Zuldazar and in Boralus has a quest for you–The Arena Calls. Or, if you forget to pick it up there, you can start it from within the Adventure Journal.
  
  • Quest requirement: Win 10 Arena PvP Skirmishes
    
  • Reward: A PvP loot box
    
• Passive buff: +50% honor gains from Skirmishes

If you’ve been looking to make some Honor gains, this is the week to do it!

Head into Arathi Basin for a head-to-head battle against AI opponents. This new Brawl will be available March 20. Use the Group Finder tool (hotkey “I”) in the Player vs. Player tab to take part.

We’re working on a change to the Arcane Heart Azerite Trait that was introduced in Rise of Azshara. How it works today is:

Arcane Heart gives you a buff for every 1.5 million damage or healing you do. However, damage or healing that comes from something other than you casting a spell is not counted. For example, a Blood Death Knight doing healing from Death Strike isn’t benefitting from that healing counting to the next proc of Arcane Heart.

So we’re developing a fix for that. Currently, the change looks like this:

Items

• Heart of Azeroth
  
  • Arcane Heart
    
    • Fixed a bug that caused some damage and healing effects to go uncounted by this Azerite Trait.
    • Damage and healing counted to activate Omnipotence is no longer counted while Omnipotence is active.

The second change there is needed to keep this from being a big buff for a Trait that we feel is fairly well-balanced before we make the bugfix.

If all goes well, we expect to bring this fix to the game with maintenance this week (tomorrow for Americas realms, and thereafter for EU and Asian realms).