World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

World of Warcraft is best when you have a community of other players around you, and while numerous ways to participate in cross-realm play have been added to the game over the years, there are still many aspects of the experience that are realm-based. From your history with your guild to your interactions with the economy around you, a realm with a healthy population provides more opportunities, and it’s been several years since we last connected some realms.

We’ve now completed a comprehensive study of realm populations for every realm in the world. Over the next 2-3 months, we’re going to connect the low-population realms to other existing realms. This process will take place during scheduled maintenance, connecting a few realms each week, until we’ve connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players.

As this project unfolds, we will post notices in advance of each week’s connections in the appropriate regions and languages. During each maintenance period, everything will be automatically combined for the affected realms. When maintenance is complete, players on affected realms will log into Battle for Azeroth and find that they’re now part of a larger connected-realm community. At the same time, we’ll merge the appropriate realm discussion forums.

Please keep an eye out for notifications here as we proceed through this project. Again, we’ll let you know here in advance when realms in this region are about to be connected.

Thank you very much!

With the upcoming Ahn’Qiraj event in WoW Classic, we’ve seen players discussing transferring to a different server to become the Scarab Lord. We’d like to clarify that there is a 90-day period following a character transfer, during which a player is prevented from opening the gates and obtaining the mount.

If you transfer to another realm, you will still be able to complete the quest within 90 days of the transfer, however, you will not receive the rewards associated with being the first to turn it in. We want to allow players to transfer, but that should be so they can play with their friends, not disrupt another realm’s Scepter race.

We hope this clears up the concern.

Dungeons and Raids

• Operation: Mechagon – Workshop
  
  • King Mechagon’s hologram within Ampvolt Arcade should no longer trigger more than once and spawn additional waves of enemies.
    

In this next build of the Shadowlands alpha, combat potions, such as primary stat potions and mana potions, now have a 5 minute cooldown. Additionally, they are no longer limited to one use per encounter. This is intended to make potion use less of a hassle, less expensive, and more decision-oriented in various situations throughout the game.

In raid encounters, players will still have the option of using a potion at the start of an encounter, but using a potion just prior to and as close to the pull as possible will no longer be required. Longer encounters will now offer up more than one moment to use a potion for maximum tactical advantage. Ending a raid boss encounter with a wipe or a win will reset the potion cooldown.

In dungeons, spacing out potion use will place more emphasis on deciding the most important times to use them.

In PvP situations where combat potions are allowed, such as War Mode, Battlegrounds, and Epic Battlegrounds, the rate at which you drop combat can vary greatly. This change will bring a consistent expected cooldown to combat potions when you see enemies consume them.

Please feel free to share your feedback on this change in this thread. Thank you.

Fair tidings Illidari. The next build of the Shadowlands Alpha will have a number of changes based on your feedback. We’re generally happy with the core kit of both Demon Hunter specializations, but want to improve talent diversity.

Havoc

• Demonic Appetite - Consuming a soul fragment no longer reduces the cooldown of Eye Beam.
• Cycle of Hatred - When Chaos Strike refunds Fury, it will reduce the cooldown of Eye Beam (was Metamorphosis) .
  
  • Developers’ notes: We’ve reconsidered the addition of Eye Beam cooldown reduction to Demonic Appetite, believing it will make that talent a dominant choice in the row. Instead, we’re placing that benefit on Cycle of Hatred, which is competing against other options for AOE damage.
• Insatiable Hunger: Demon's Bite deals 20% more damage and generates 5 to 10 additional Fury.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Since this ability only increased the maximum additional Fury that Demon's Bite could generate, it was possible to frequently see no noticeable benefit. The talent will now always result in at least 5 extra Fury generated.
• Immolation Aura now generates 20 Fury when cast.
• Burning Hatred: Immolation Aura now generates an additional 60 Fury over 12 seconds.
  
  • Developers’ notes: We added Immolation Aura back to Havoc baseline because it was a nice mid-tier AOE damage ability that could be shared across the specs. Player feedback made it clear that Fury generation was an important part of the ability, so we moved the initial burst of Fury to the main ability. The Fury generation over time will remain in the talent.
• Fel Mastery has been replaced with a new talent, Unbound Chaos.
• Unbound Chaos: While Immolation Aura is active, your inner demon slams into nearby enemies at the end of your Fel Rush, dealing Chaos damage.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Fel Mastery was a simple buff to Fel Rush damage that required frequent reorientation to your target and as a result primarily saw play alongside Momentum. By binding the damage bonus to Immolation Aura, we feel like the talent can be taken on its own or alongside Momentum.

Vengeance

• Immolation Aura and Fiery Brand tooltips were changed to show the total amount of damage done over the duration of the spell.
  
• Soul Cleave damage increased 20%.
  
  • Developers’ notes: We often see feedback that Soul Cleave is a low priority button because the passive consumption of soul fragments means no healing is lost if it isn’t pressed, and Spirit Bomb offers more damage and healing per soul fragment. We made a change already that adds additional healing to Soul Cleave for each orb consumed, but also we’re increasing the damage of Soul Cleave as well. We’d like to see Spirit Bomb used intermittently to apply Frailty, but Soul Cleave to be the spec’s primary source of healing and damage.
• Agonizing Flames no longer increases the damage of Immolation Aura. It now increases its duration by 50%.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Increasing the duration of Immolation Aura increases the value of the talent’s movement speed buff and creates synergy with other talents like Infernal Armor and the re-design of Charred Flesh mentioned below.
• Feast of Souls healing increased by 25%.
  
  • Developers’ notes: This talent is intentionally straightforward, offering an option that makes Vengeance’s primary consumer Soul Cleave better. It’s a fine option, but may need additional tuning to close the gap with the more active options in the row.
• Charred Flesh has been redesigned: Immolation Aura damage now increases the duration of your Fiery Brand by 0.5 seconds.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Fire damage alone was not an attractive option when compared to the other options in the row. This interaction with Immolation Aura can significantly increase the uptime of a key defensive ability while also increasing its overall damage. This creates interesting synergies with anything that modifies Fiery Brand or Immolation Aura such as the talents Agonizing Flames and Burning Alive.

Please continue to reply with your thoughts on Demon Hunters in Shadowlands!