World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

DISCOVER THE DRAGON ISLES

• Ohn’ahran Plains
• Removed: Thaldraszus

NEW DUNGEONS

Developers’ note: Throughout the testing period, character levels will be scaled when entering Dragonflight dungeons. When this happens, the amount of talent points that your character will have available will reflect the original level, not the scaled level.

• The Azure Vault
• Brackenhide Hollow

CHARACTER LEVEL

Developers’ note: With each phase, we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state. After making a new template character, make sure to talk to Questzertauren and he will prepare you for any available content.

• Level 62 Character Template
• Maximum Level: 65
• Mechagnomes have been re-enabled.

Classes

• NEW TALENT SYSTEM
  
  • Switching Talents and Talent Loadouts no longer requires being in a rested area.
    
    • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, we’ve removed the rested area requirement for changing Talents and Loadouts. Players are now be able to change their talents anywhere out in the world, as long as they’re not in combat. Additionally, previous restrictions such as not being in an Active Mythic+ instance or in a Rated PVP match still apply. In tandem with loosening this requirement, we’re adding a 5 second cast time when players change their existing talents/loadouts to prevent players from immediately swapping between different builds. This cast time does not apply to any new Talent points gained, those can be spent and activated immediately. Please let us know your thoughts on this change.
  • Evoker
    
    • Racial Abilities
      
      • Soar – Cooldown reduced to 4 minutes (was 5 minutes).
      • Familiar Skies now reduces Soar’s cooldown by 1 minute on continents that you have fully explored.
    • Class Tree
      
      • Developers’ notes: We want to add additional utility-focused talent choices to the Evoker class tree to diversify talent builds. With that in mind, some additional control and self-healing options are now available:
      • New Talent – Grovetender’s Gift: Emerald Blossom instantly heals you for 125% spell power when cast.
      • New Talent – Walloping Blow - Wing Buffet and Tail Swipe knock enemies further and daze them, reducing movement speed by 70% for 4 sec.
      • New Talent – Regenerative Magic: - Source of Magic forms a bond with your ally, causing 20% of their healing to also heal you while you are below 50% health.
      • Ancient Flame moved to a new location in the tree, next to Attuned to the Dream.
    • Preservation
      
      • Developers’ notes: These latest talent changes for Preservation are aimed at improving Temporal Anomaly’s synergy with the rest of the kit, and balancing Bronze-based builds against Green-based ones. We were also unhappy with some talent nodes (Essence Strike and Grove Tender) and replaced them with talents that should encourage a wider variety of spell usage.
      • Life-Giver’s Flame is now a 2 point node, and moved down one slot in the tree.
      • Essence Strike has been removed and replaced by Essence Attunement.
      • New Talent: Essence Attunement – Causes Essence Burst to stack twice.
      • Temporal Anomaly now heals every 2 seconds (was 1 second). Healing doubled to compensate.
      • Convergence has been removed and replaced by Resonating Sphere.
      • New Talent: Resonating Sphere – Causes Temporal Anomaly to apply Echo at 15%/30% Effectiveness (2 point node). Does not apply Echo’s direct heal. Affected by Time Lord to become up to 60% Echo effectiveness.
      • Temporal Disruption now causes Temporal Anomaly to tick twice as fast (was healing for more).
      • Grove Tender has been removed and replaced by Ouroboros.
      • New Talent: Ouroboros – Each person healed by Emerald Blossom increases healing of next Echo by 15%, stacking 15 times.
      • Time Keeper has swapped positions with Time of Need in the talent tree.
  • Hunter
    
    • Class Changes
      
      • Survival of the Fittest removed from Tenacity pets.
      • New Tenacity active button – Fortitude of the Bear: Increase the maximum health of you and your pet by 20% for 10 seconds.
    • Class Tree
      
      • Hunter’s Agility changed from Avoidance to 4/8% Dodge per rank.
      • Thick Hides removed.
      • Fogged Crystal removed.
      • Born to be Wild now works with Survival of the Fittest and is now a 2-rank talent, reducing cooldowns of affected abilities by 10% per rank.
      • Improved Tranquilizing Shot changed to a 1-point node.
      • Survival of the Fittest added to the tree.
      • New Choice node for Survival of the fittest:
        
        • Reduce the cooldown of Survival of the Fittest by 60 seconds, and increase the duration by 2 seconds.
        • Increase the amount of damage reduction from Survival of the Fittest by 20%.
      • Several talents on the class tree have had their positions adjusted due to Thick Hides and Fogged Crystal being removed, as well as Survival of the Fittest being added.
      • New (NYI) Talent – Sentinel Owl: Call forth a Sentinel Owl to the target location, granting you unhindered vision. Your attacks ignore line of sight against any target in this area. Every 200 Focus spent grants you 1 second of the Sentinel Owl when cast, up to a maximum of 12 seconds.
        
        • New Choice node for Sentinel Owl:
          
          • Sentinel’s Perception: Sentinel Owl now also grants unhindered vision to party members when active.
          • Sentinel’s Wisdom: While Sentinel Owl is active, your party gains 5% Leech and 3% Avoidance.
    • Marksmanship
      
      • Serpenstalker’s Trickery is now a 1 point talent.
      • A large amount of talents in the bottom left of the tree were adjusted to fix dependency problems.
    • Survival
      
      • Explosive Expert changed to 2/4 second reduction per point.
      • Kill Command for Survival only now has an innate 10% chance to have its cooldown reset.
      • Predator’s Kill Command chance reduced to 15% (was 25%).
      • Fury of the Eagle lowered to 30% crit chance bonus against targets below 20% health.
      • Fury of the Eagle now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
      • Tactical advantage had its tooltip split to a separate number for Wildfire Bomb and Flanking Strike. Wildfire Bomb’s values reduced to 4/8% per point, Flanking Strike values unchanged.
  • Paladin
    
    • Holy
      
      • Developers’ note: The Holy Paladin Talent tree is now enabled in this Alpha build. For Dragonflight, we want to give Holy Paladins more options for caster-focused playstyles by bringing back the Power of the Silver Hand passive effect from the Legion Artifact, in addition to the active button Tyr’s Deliverance.
    • Class Talents
      
      • Afterimage now correctly only triggers on a Word of Glory cast.
      • Incandescence damage increased by 300%.
        
        • Developers’ note: This talent was extremely under tuned and did not feel rewarding as a point investment in the talent tree.
    • Protection
      
      • Changed positions of Strength of Conviction, Resolute Defender, Faith’s Armor, and Guardian of Ancient Kings.
      • Added several additional node connections in center section of tree.
      • Faith’s Armor increased to 10% (was 5%).
      • Blessed Hammer now correctly overrides Crusader Strike.
    • Retribution
      
      • Removed Talents
        
        • Last Rites
        • Deemed Unworthy
        • Swift Crusader
        • Long Arm of the Law
          
          • Developer’s note: We recognize that movement is fun and feels good when attached to short cooldown buttons. That said, our goal for Retribution Paladin is to keep their strengths in removing things that hinder their mobility, or to charge into battle on their Divine Steed, not to give them a short duration burst of movement on a very short cooldown.
        • Liadrin’s Fury
      • New Talents
        
        • Holy Crusader – Increases mastery by 2%.
        • Seal of Wrath – Judgment has a 25% chance to cast again and deal extra Holy damage to its target.
        • Empyrean Endowment – Judgment empowers your next Templar’s Verdict to automatically trigger Divine Storm with 25% more effectiveness. This effect can only occur every 30 seconds.
        • Executioner’s Wrath – Execution Sentence now instead deals 15% of the damage taken from your abilities to the target and nearby enemies within 8 yards.
        • Sanctified Ground – Your Consecration is 15% larger, and you cannot be slowed below 80% of normal movement speed within Consecration. This effect lasts for 2 seconds after leaving Consecration.
        • Sealed Verdict – Your Holy Power spending abilities increase the damage of your next Blade of Justice by 8/16%.
      • Modified Talents
        
        • Highlord’s Judgment now has 2 ranks and increases Judgment damage by 8/16% per rank.
        • Calm Before the Storm now causes enemies hit by your Divine Storm to take 100% more damage from your Consecration for 8 seconds (was 50%).
        • Inner Power now grants Holy Power every 12 seconds while you are in combat (was 10 seconds).
          
          • Developers’ note: This is aimed to tune the Holy Power generation overall and to balance against Sanctification.
      • Developer Notes
        
        • The area before the 1st gate has been restructured in a way that allows players to bypass the talents that they do not want and save a talent point while trying to go down all 3 sides of the tree. Also, the importance of the new talents such as Timely Judgment and Condemned Blade has been heightened so that players consider them more often when creating a build.
        • Zeal and Blade of Wrath have been moved up and put before the 1st gate.
          
          • Zeal and Blade of Wrath positional changes are aimed to solidify the foundation of Retribution Paladin. The new positioning will allow the players to get these talents in a simpler and more satisfying way for both leveling and end game content.
        • Crusade and Avenging Wrath: Might choice node has been moved up and put before the 2nd gate. This choice node is now located where Execution Sentence was in the previous build.
        • Execution Sentence and its improvement node has been moved down and put after the 2nd gate.
          
          • The positional changes to Crusade/AW: Might and Execution Sentence are aimed to provide gameplay defining options after the 2nd gate. The change to Execution Sentence will allow new gameplay options and is now heightened with its improvement nodes aimed at both single target and AOE situations.
        • The area after the 2nd gate has been reconstructed in a way that aims to increase build diversity and choice.
    • Known Issues
      
      • Not all rank upgrades are implemented.
  • Shaman
    
    • Elemental
      
      • New Talent – Heat Wave: Casting Primordial Wave triggers Lava Surge immediately and every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
      • Primal Storm Elemental no longer moves slower than other Elementals after engaging in combat.
      • Earthquake damage reduced by 40%.
        
        • Developers’ note: This is not intended to be a nerf, but a damage profile adjustment. Earthquake dominates Elemental’s AoE damage profile in Shadowlands. We’ve also added talents in Dragonflight that improve Earthquake’s output such as Unrelenting Calamity, Eye of the Storm, and Mountains Will Fall which would have continued this trend. The goal is to allow for abilities like Chain Lightning, Lightning Rod, Frost Shock (with Electrified Shocks), Flame Shock, and Lava Burst to contribute more towards Elemental’s AoE.
      • Rolling Magma’s Lava Burst and Lava Burst Overload damage now reduces the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 0.2 seconds/0.5 seconds (was from 0.5 seconds/1 second).
        
        • Developers’ note: The interactions are with Primordial Wave and Ascendance are intentional, but the cooldown reduction was initially tuned too high.
    • Restoration
      
      • Cloudburst Totem now converts 30% of stored healing (was 20%) and cooldown increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
        
        • Developers’ note: With some new talents that interact with Cloudburst Totem like Call of the Elements, Totemic Surge, and Totemic Focus, we feel its effectiveness needs to be decreased. We started with its healing effectiveness initially but after some feedback believe it’s more important for each totem cast to feel meaningful rather than having more uses of the totem.
  • Warlock
    
    • Developers’ note: In this Alpha build, we are unveiling the talent trees of our favorite curse slinging, shadow bolt hurling, demon summoning class: the Warlock. These trees were built to emphasize the strong thematic and rotational gameplay that is already present with each specialization.
    • That said, we are making a few changes to address the pain points we’ve experienced while playing and concerns that have been brought up by the community. You can read more about these changes down below and our thoughts regarding why the change was made.
      
      • Core Changes
        
        • Spell Lock in the talent tree
          
          • With Dragonflight, we’ve removed Spell Lock from Felhunters and Spell Lock is now available for Warlocks to learn themselves. With this change, we are aiming to allow for more pet diversity in content where Felhunters feel required like dungeons and PvP.
        • Dark Soul is not in the talent tree for Dragonflight intentionally. There are a few reasons for this:
          
          • All Warlock specs have access to a powerful summon cooldown that interacts with the rest of their spells where Dark Soul increases a stat by a large amount. We prefer to keep the interactive spell.
          • With cooldown stacking, a high percentage of overall damage is boiled down to the cooldown window. While this can be useful for bursting, but damage output outside of this window tends to be lackluster.
          • Across the classes there are new active spells which we are both excited about and equally cautious of causing keybinding issues by adding. Finding times to pull back on active spells is something we’re on the lookout for.
        • Shadow Bolt and Incinerate base damage has been increased
          
          • We’ve increased the damage of Shadow Bolt and Incinerate significantly and lowered modifiers from various talents. Our goal is for these spells to feel more powerful without having to ramp to see benefits from casting it.
        • Shadowflame
          
          • Shadowflame is returning; however, we don’t want a short-ranged cone spell to be a rotational for a caster, so we’ve removed the damage from the ability.
      • Affliction
        
        • Vile Taint revamp
          
          • Vile Taint has been reworked – Unleashes a vile explosion at the target location, dealing X Shadow damage over 10 seconds to 8 enemies within 10 yards and applies Agony and Curse of Exhaustion to them.
          • With this change, we aim to allow Affliction to ramp up faster in dungeon gameplay especially in combination with talents like Agonizing Corruption and Sow the Seeds.
        • Deathbolt is now a base talent
          
          • Through Deathbolt and its modifying talents we aim to give Affliction an interesting alternative to Malefic Rapture when the situation calls for single target damage.
      • Destruction
        
        • An Alternative to Havoc
          
          • We are exploring an alternative to Havoc called Mayhem. It’s a passive that gives your single target spells a chance to deal 60% of its damage to a random nearby target. The goal with this talent is to give a more passive two-target option for players who would like to opt out of Havoc gameplay. For tuning, we intend for active Havoc gameplay to be rewarded over playing with Mayhem.
    • Along with these changes you’ll see both new spells and some old friends returning. Soul Rot and Decimating Bolt will be coming with us from the Shadowlands, Dimensional Rift returns from Legion, and many more.
    • While the core rotations of each specialization will remain familiar, these talents offer new options that will allow you to modify your gameplay and choose what’s important to you.
    • Welcome back to Azeroth, Warlocks. We look forward to hearing tales of the chaos you’ll rain down across the Dragon Isles. Be sure to let us know your thoughts, our Eye of Kilrogg will be actively watching your discussions.
  • Warrior
    
    • Developers’ note: As the Warrior trees were just recently put on Alpha, we’re still processing the large amount of great feedback being provided, so please keep giving us your thoughts as we’re collecting feedback from a wide variety of sources and it all helps!
    • Even though we’re still processing the feedback we’ve received, we did want to take some time to respond to a few points of feedback:
      
      • Multi-level stat nodes in the Warrior tree serve as gates that you need to spend into in order to access the classes ultimate abilities. The intention of the Talent system is that there are choices and not that you can obtain every point. Using multipoint nodes is a way to control that, but also to direct the flow of certain specializations towards groups of talents that are likely better for them. However, we’ve been reading your feedback and are endeavoring to make them more interesting and varied where we can.
      • Players have expressed some negativity around buying back components of old abilities. We’re trying to keep this to a minimum where we can in the warrior class, for example Rampage’s full functionality now comes from one talent. However, in some cases these talents are used for teaching new players during the leveling up process to play their class correctly.
      • We also wanted to clarify some concerns Fury players have regarding needing to obtain 4 weapons to perform optimally in the game. Current tuning aside, our expectation and plan is for Titan’s Grip to be the most competitive specialization for those that engage with progression related content of all forms at the highest levels. However, for those looking for a more relaxed playstyle that is less stressful and skill dependent but still competitive then they have that option also.
    • Class Talents
      
      • New Talent: Concussive Blows – Reduce the cooldown of Pummel by 1.5 seconds and successfully interrupting an enemy increases the damage you deal against them by 5% for 10 seconds. This may only occur once every 30 seconds.
      • Rearranged some talent nodes and created more interweaving paths to try and create more build variety.
      • Removed Die by the Sword from the Class tree and returned it to the Arms tree.
      • Improved Heroic Throw should correctly override Heroic Throw.
      • Reduced ranks of Two-Handed and Dual-Wield Specializations to 1.
    • Arms
      
      • New Talent: Skull Banner – You throw down a Skull Banner at your feet, empowering your allies. Increases critical strike damage by 20% for party members within 20 yards of the war banner. Lasts 10 seconds. Removed Concussive Blows from the Arms tree.
      • New Talent: Die by the Sword – Increases your parry chance by 100% and reduces all damage you take by 30% for 8 seconds.
      • Changed some pathing to try and make synergy groups clearer.
      • The Aura applied to enemies by Fatality is now named Fatal Mark and now lasts 60 seconds, refreshing by new stacks.
      • Fatal Mark caused by the Fatality talent can no longer critically strike.
      • Cleaned up the tooltip for Exploit the Weakness.
      • Built old ranks of Colossus Smash into Colossus Smash correctly.
      • Built old ranks of Sweeping Strikes into Sweeping Strikes correctly.
      • Reduced ranks of Improved Mortal Strike and Improved Overpower to 1.
      • Updated Icon for Martial Prowess.
    • Fury
      
      • New Talent: Unbridled Ferocity – Rampage has a 10% chance to grant you Recklessness for 4 seconds.
      • New Talent: Slaughtering Strikes – Raging Blow causes every strike of your next Rampage to deal and additional 10% damage. Stacks up to 5 times.
      • New Talent: Raging Armaments – Raging Blow gains and extra charge.
      • New Talent: Skull Banner – You throw down a Skull Banner at your feet, empowering your allies. Increases critical strike damage by 20% for party members within 20 yards of the war banner. Lasts 10 seconds.
      • Removed Concussive Blows from the Fury tree and moved to the Class tree.
      • Changed some pathing and node positions to try and make synergy groups clearer and add build diversity.
      • Titan’s Grip and Single-Minded Fury is now a choice talent.
      • Moved Rampage closer to the top of the tree.
      • Fixed a dependency issue with Meat Cleaver.
      • Cold Steel, Hot Blood should now generate 4 rage and references this in the tooltip correctly.
      • Bloodcraze’s Aura tooltip should now display the correct values.
      • Improved Rampage is now built into Rampage.
      • Reduced ranks of Improved Bloodthirst and Improved Raging Blow to 1.

PROFESSIONS

• User Interface
  
  • The recipe panel has been updated for better ease of use and clarity:
    
    • Unlearned & pre-Dragonflight recipes are now found via filters.
      
      • Favorite recipes are unchanged and are expansion agnostic, so you’ll always see them even if the expansion is not filtered.
    • Recipe skill up chance is now represented through icons instead of recipe name text color. This change is more in-line with the new Recipe frame design while being more accessible to individuals with color vision deficiency.
    • Unlearned recipe names now show a gray color instead of a white color.
    • Recrafting Equipment has its own dedicated section in the recipe panel.
      
      • Please note that for this Alpha build, Recrafting is not yet implemented.
• Gathering Nodes
  
  • In this Alpha build, players might notice that there are a large amount of mining & herbalism nodes spawned in the Ohn’ahran Plains. While we’re eager for feedback on how these feel, we’re still in the process of setting up the Mining & Herbalism professions and players will not be able to gather these nodes until the Professions have been enabled. In the meantime, please let us know if there are any nodes in unusual positions and are not easily accessed!
• Engineering
  
  • In this Alpha build, Engineering has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. There are a few new concepts that we’re exploring for Engineering in Dragonflight:
    
    • Engineers are able to craft Wrists for each Armor type, which can be socketed with different Tinkers that have a variety of on-use effects (such as temporary invisibility or summoning an Alarm-O-Turret).
    • We’ve added a combat resurrection consumable for non-engineers: the Convincingly Realistic Jumper Cables. These are weaker versions of the engineering variant, the Reusable Jumper Cables, and we’re very interested in hearing feedback on how they play out over the course of Alpha.
    • Various Safety Components can be used as Optional Reagents for crafting Engineering items - these Safety Components can reduce the chance of tinker malfunctions or outright prevent catastrophic malfunctions.
    • Speaking of malfunctions, the chance for engineering items to blow up in the users’ face now scale their success chance with Engineering specialization traits and Engineering Skill level. There will be a meaningful difference in success rate between new engineers that have lower skill and specialization traits and engineers that have maximized their knowledge of the profession.
  • In addition to the above, there’s a plethora of new bombs, tinkers and consumables that the Engineering profession can make. Please send us your feedback!
• Tailoring
  
  • In this Alpha build, Tailoring has been enabled and can be trained by the Associate Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Tailoring, much like the other armor-crafting Professions, has a plethora of new set & item equip effects and we’re particularly interested in hearing feedback about how these new effects feel. Spellthreads are also making a comeback as leg enchants for Intellect users.
• Specializations
  
  • Unlocking Specializations requires 25 skill in that Profession. Once unlocked, players can spend Specialization points to unlock various bonuses for their Profession.
  • Developers’ note: For the purposes of Alpha we’ve added a consumable, Professor Instructataur’s Top Secret Guide, on the Associate Professor Instructaur vendor that gives players 50 Specialization points. Below are a few Specialization paths.
  • Engineering
    
    • Explosives – Improve in the production of bombs of all types, gaining +1 Skill when crafting bombs per point in this specialization.
      
      • Short Fuse – Specialize in the creation and use of bombs without safety fuses. Gain +1 Skill when crafting bombs in this specialization.
    • Optimized Efficiency – Specialize in the general precautions and techniques that are invaluable skills for all Engineers. Gain +1 Skill to all engineering crafts per point in this specialization.
      
      • Scrapper – Specialize in making the most of seemingly useless junk. Gain +5 Multicraft for all Engineering crafts per point in this specialization.
  • Tailoring
    
    • Draconic Needlework – Source the magic of the Dragon Isles to craft exceptional clothwear with reagents such as Azureweave and Chronocloth, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
      
      • Azureweave Tailoring – Focus on the Arcane nature of the Blue Dragonflight in your tailoring, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization when making and using Azureweave.
    • Garmentcrafting – Improve at tailoring Cloth Armor to take on the most powerful foes in the Dragon Isles, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specialization.
      
      • Outerwear – Improve at tailoring the major aspects of an outfit, such as Chest and Leg pieces of armor, gaining +1 Skill per point in this specializations.
• Known Issues
  
  • Inscription: Draconic Treatises are infinitely consumable, this will be fixed in a future build. They will be single-use items that refresh each weekly reset for a small boost to your Profession Knowledge.

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• New HUD UI
  
  • Unit frame art updated
    
    • Party frame
  • Edit Mode
    
    • Added Cast Bar
    • Added Minimap
    • Added Encounter Bar

Classes

• Hunter
  
  • Survival
    
    • [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Mad Bombardier damage bonus has been reduced to 50% (was 70%).
    • [With realm restarts] Mongoose Bite damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
    • [With realm restarts] Raptor Strike damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
    • [With realm restarts] Serpent Sting damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
    • [With realm restarts] Kill Command damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
    • [With realm restarts] Fixed an issue where Raptor Strike was dealing less damage than intended while Aspect of the Eagle was active.
      
      • Developers’ note: The Survival Hunter Mad Bombardier 4-piece set bonus is still causing Survival Hunters to over perform in multi-target situations. We’re lowering the effectiveness of the 4-piece bonus while also increasing the damage of your single target abilities to offset this loss of damage against a single target.
• Warlock
  
  • Destruction
    
    • [With realm restarts] Rain of Fire damage reduced by 20%.
    • [With realm restarts] Infernal’s Immolation Aura reduced by 20%.
      
      • Developers’ note: We’re still seeing Destruction excel in multi-target situations. We’re applying additional changes here to stabilize their throughput when scaling with high target counts.

Dungeons and Raids

• Mythic+
  
  • Fixed an issue that caused listed Grimrail Depot and Iron Docks keystones to not appear in the Group Finder UI when searching by keystone level.
  • Affixes
    
    • Shrouded
      
      • [With realm restarts] Zul’gamux now casts Blood Barrier less often.
      • [With realm restarts] Zul’gamux has found a new location to hide in Return to Karazhan: Upper.
  • Grimrail Depot
    
    • [With realm restarts] Grom’kar Far Seer’s Storm Shield can now be purged.
    • [With realm restarts] Grom’kar Cinderseer will no longer cast Lava Wreath.
    • Railmaster Rocketspark
      
      • [With realm restarts] Borka the Brute’s Mad Dash damage reduced by 30%.
    • Skylord Tovra
      
      • [With realm restarts] Thunderous Breath initial damage reduced by 25%.
  • Iron Docks
    
    • Fleshrender Nok’gar
      
      • [With realm restarts] Dreadfang’s Shredding Swipes should no longer hit players multiple times.
    • Oshir
      
      • [With realm restarts] Feeding Frenzy now requires Oshir to suffer 5% damage to be interrupted (was 8%).
    • Skulloc
      
      • [With realm restarts] Skulloc’s melee damage reduced by 15%.
      • [With realm restarts] Koramar will no longer cast Shattering Blade.
  • Return to Karazhan: Lower
    
    • [With realm restarts] Ghostly Philanthropist will no longer cast Throw Coin.
    • [With realm restarts] Gang Ruffian’s Poisonous Shank damage reduced by 30%.
    • The Opera Hall: Wikket
      
      • [With realm restarts] Winged Assistant health reduced by 30%.
    • Moroes
      
      • [With realm restarts] Moroes’ Garrote duration reduced to 1 minute (was permanent).
      • [With realm restarts] Moroes’ Dinner Party effect now increases the damage and attack speed of nearby dinner guests by 50% (was 100%).
  • Return to Karazhan: Upper
    
    • Shade of Medivh
      
      • [With realm restarts] Flame Wreath damage reduced by 30%.

Items and Rewards

• Fixed an issue causing the Great Vault to display the wrong item level for upcoming rewards.

Hey everybody!
Now that we’ve announced that Wrath of the Lich King Classic will release on September 26th, I want to give you an update on some of the items we’ve been collecting feedback on since our Beta began.

Raid Lockouts
We’ve decided that lockouts should be shared between Heroic and Normal versions of the raid, but NOT between 10/25-player versions of the raid. You’ll be able to do both the 10-player and 25-player version of each raid every lockout period but will have to choose between Normal and Heroic for the raids that offer that choice.

Our original concern was with players feeling “required” to do the same raid multiple times per week in order to “keep up,” but that came more from the original experience of Trial of the Crusader than from Naxxramas. Trial of the Crusader’s original release allowed you to run four different versions of the same content in a single week, all of which provided better loot than anything that had been previously available, which created enormous pressure to run all four versions in order to leapfrog over the Ulduar loot. Making the Normal and Heroic versions of Trial of the Crusader share a lockout does a lot to mitigate that, by cutting the number of weekly runs in half.

Additionally, players have pointed out that in many cases they want to be able to run the 25-player version of the raid with their guild, while pugging the 10-player version. Ultimately, that positive social aspect of having raids of various sizes available each week is compelling to us, and fits our goal of providing a vibrant social ecosystem, for friendships to form and develop in. You might, for example, find yourself pugging 10-player raids with a few of the same people from time to time, and end up inviting them to fill an empty slot on your main raid roster later. By contrast, if you could do both Normal and Heroic in the same week, you’d be incentivized to push your existing group to run them back-to-back, which isn’t the same sort of positive social experience.
This was recently bugged on the Wrath Classic Beta, and both 10/25-player version of Naxxramas appeared to share a lockout, but that was unintended and will be fixed before we launch.

Related to this, we also plan to make any trinkets with both Normal and Heroic versions (such as Death’s Verdict) share a Unique-Equip category, so that you can’t have both versions of the same trinket equipped at the same time. While it was originally possible to do this, it was never intended, and motivated us to create the Unique-Equipped categories back then. Prior to creating the Unique-Equipped categories, we could only prevent characters from wearing two copies of the exact same item.

Race and Faction Change
While it won’t be ready for our launch in September, we have changed our minds on this, and we’re working on adding the Race and Faction change as a paid service in a future patch.

Originally, we planned not to offer Race and Faction change at all, because it felt like it removed some of that fantasy feeling of having dramatically different physical attributes that affect your gameplay. We were also a little worried about players chasing the “flavor of the month” in terms of racial abilities However, we’re convinced by the argument that being able to play with your friends is more important, and that you should be able to bring your accomplishments with you when you do. This turns out to be the same tradeoff provided by transferring between realms, which is already available as a paid service, so it makes sense to make the same decision with respect to Race and Faction change.

In short, this fits our aim to nurture and protect social experiences, so we’ll work on it for an upcoming patch.

Character-Based Mounts and Achievements
As before, we plan to have mounts and achievements be per-character, rather than on the account.
This originally came up in response to our plan to not include Race and Faction change, as a suggested alternative way for players to preserve their accomplishments when re-rolling. Since we’ve been convinced to allow Race and Faction change in an upcoming patch, we’re going to focus our efforts on that, and preserve the original Lich King behavior of keeping mounts and achievement associated with the character that earned them.

LFG Tools
We continue to iterate on the bulletin-board style Looking for Group tool, and we do not have plans to add the Random Dungeon Finder.
For players, this has probably been the hottest topic of discussion since our announcement, and we welcome all the continuing feedback on how to improve the tool and make it better. I know this will be disappointing news for some, but we want to settle this topic before launch so everyone knows what to expect and can plan accordingly.

We remain hopeful that our recent anti-boosting changes, especially on Fresh Start realms, will invigorate the lower-level dungeons around launch. We also expect the LFG tool to help facilitate long-term friendship formation for players who are looking for it.

2v2 Arena Achievements and Titles
We’re going to award achievements and titles for the 2v2 Arena bracket, just like we did in Burning Crusade Classic.

Originally, Wrath of the Lich King dropped achievements and titles from the 2v2 Arena bracket, but due to popular demand, we’re going to preserve them in Wrath Classic. When we originally stopped awarding titles and achievements for 2v2s, it was because 2v2 was difficult to balance. Nowadays, rather than try to make all classes equally capable in all brackets, we want to preserve the existing class balance and celebrate the unique play style for the classes that perform well in each bracket.

We’ll always continue to listen to feedback on these and all topics. I hope this answers many lingering questions about what the state of things will be when we release.

Thanks, as always, for your interest and support!

What about name changes?
Name changes have been planned all along and will be available at launch.

Any ETA on Pre-patch? Or Fresh servers.
Fresh servers will launch with pre-patch, and we’ll have that date for you in a separate announcement along with other nearby dates for context.
The next couple of months are pretty busy, so we want the schedule to be as clear as possible.

I feel raid lockouts are being over thought. it was ONE raid that had 4 lockouts. ICC had dynamic difficulty and that’s fine, the raids before ToGC had only normal (and hard modes you activate there).
togc should have dynamic difficulty like ICC as opposed to still having 4 but being locked out of 2 of them
To clarify, Ulduar will work as it did originally. We’re not actually adding an additional Difficulty setting to Ulduar, only the hard-modes that it originally had. Since the hard modes are triggered by mechanics on the normal-mode bosses, they’re already part of the same lockout.
As you said, Trial of the Crusader was the only outlier, which is why we’re making a change there.

Is the LFG tool going to teleport us to the dungeon?
No, but once a couple of you arrive, you can use the meeting stone to summon appropriately leveled party members to join you.

ICC was always like this, only TotC is changing, if they implement in in the ICC way it’ll be fine (you can change per boss)
We’d like to let you change between normal/heroic per-boss in both ToC and ICC, but we’re not ready to commit to that yet. We’ll know more as ToC gets closer and we have more time to look at how its built, and how hard it would be to change.
All I’m confirming in this post is that you definitely won’t be able to do both difficulties in the same week, and that you definitely CAN do 10 and 25-player versions in the same week, since that was previously something we were considering doing differently.

With scheduled weekly maintenance (tomorrow, August 9 in this region), we intend to make further adjustments to Survival Hunters and Destruction Warlocks.

Hunter

• Survival
  
  • Set Bonus (4): Mad Bombardier damage bonus has been reduced to 50% (was 70%).
  • Mongoose Bite damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
  • Raptor Strike damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
  • Corrected an issue where Raptor Strike was dealing less damage than intended while Aspect of the Eagle was active.
  • Serpent Sting damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
  • Kill Command damage increased by 20%. This change does not apply to PvP.
    
    • Developers’ notes: The Survival Hunter Mad Bombardier 4-piece set bonus is still causing Survival Hunters to overperform in multi-target situations. We’re lowering the effectiveness of the 4-piece bonus while also increasing the damage of several single target abilities to offset this loss of damage against a single target.

Warlock

• Destruction
  
  • Rain of Fire damage reduced by 20%.
  • Immolation Aura (from Infernal) reduced by 20%.
    
    • Developers’ notes: We’re still seeing Destruction excel in multi-target situations. We’re applying additional changes here to stabilize their throughput when scaling with high target counts.

Greetings!

We appreciate all the feedback on the Season 4 Mythic+ dungeons that has been made thus far. We’ve made the following adjustments that will be in effect with scheduled weekly maintenance (starting tomorrow, August 9 in this region):

Dungeons and Raids

• Mythic+
  
  • Affixes
    
    • Shrouded
      
      • Zul’gamux now casts Blood Barrier less often.
      • Zul’gamux has found a new location to hide in Return to Karazhan: Upper.
  • Grimrail Depot
    
    • Grom’kar Far Seer’s Storm Shield can now be purged.
    • Grom’kar Cinderseer will no longer cast Lava Wreath.
    • Railmaster Rocketspark
      
      • Borka the Brute’s Mad Dash damage reduced by 30%.
    • Skylord Tovra
      
      • Thunderous Breath initial damage reduced by 25%.
  • Iron Docks
    
    • Fleshrender Nok’gar
      
      • Dreadfang’s Shredding Swipes should no longer hit players multiple times.
    • Oshir
      
      • Feeding Frenzy now requires Oshir to suffer 5% damage to be interrupted (was 8%).
    • Skulloc
      
      • Skulloc’s melee damage reduced by 15%.
      • Koramar will no longer cast Shattering Blade.
  • Return to Karazhan: Lower
    
    • Ghostly Philanthropist will no longer cast Throw Coin.
    • [With realm restarts] Gang Ruffian’s Poisonous Shank damage reduced by 30%.
    • The Opera Hall: Wikket
      
      • Winged Assistant health reduced by 30%.
    • Moroes
      
      • Moroes’ Garrote duration reduced to 1 minute (was permanent).
      • Moroes’ Dinner Party effect now increases the damage and attack speed of nearby dinner guests by 50% (was 100%).
  • Return to Karazhan: Upper
    
    • Shade of Medivh
      
      • Flame Wreath damage reduced by 30%.

Dungeons and Raids

• Fated Raids
  
  • Fixed an issue that could cause client and server latency after bosses are defeated.
  • Fated Castle Nathria
    
    • Sire Denathrius
      
      • Improved the client and server performance caused by Echo of Sin’s Painful Memories.
• Mythic+
  
  • Grimrail Depot
    
    • Grom’kar Captain’s Reckless Slash will now be cast less frequently.
    • Skylord Tovra
      
      • Improved the visual effect on Spinning Spear.
  • Iron Docks
    
    • Fixed an issue where Siegemaster Olugar’s Gatecrasher could become stuck on players.
    • Fleshrender Nok’gar
      
      • Burning Arrows now have a visual effect indicating where they will impact.
  • Return to Karazhan: Lower
    
    • Improved the visual effect on Ghostly Philanthropist’s Pennies From Heaven.
    • Lord Crispin Ference’s Will Breaker is now more visible.
    • Attumen the Huntsman
      
      • Spectral Charge no longer damages pets.
  • Return to Karazhan: Upper
    
    • The Curator
      
      • Fixed an issue causing Volatile Energy to fixate on pets.
    • Mana Devourer
      
      • Mana Devourer will once again cast Decimating Essence upon reaching full mana.
      • Energy Void damage reduced by 65%.
      • Resolved an issue that caused Coalesce Power to drain more mana than intended.