Upcoming Shards of Domination Set Bonus Buffs
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hotfixes - July 30, 2021

Items and Rewards

  • Shards of Domination
    • [With weekly maintenance in each region] Blood Link – The damage and healing amount has been increased at all ranks by 20%.
    • [With weekly maintenance in each region] Winds of Winter – The amount of damage and healing stored by the Winds has been increased at all ranks by ~45%.
      • Developers’ note: The difference between the three Rune Words for the Shards of Domination system is bigger than we want it to be. We have identified and fixed a bug in Winds of Winter which was preventing some damaging and healing abilities from counting towards its total, and we have retuned Winds of Winter and Blood Link so that the relative power between Rune Word bonuses is more balanced.
  • Jotungeirr, Destiny’s Call will now reset its cooldown at the end of boss encounters.
  • Fixed an issue where Ticking Sack of Terror could trigger more than intended in the presence of multiple trinkets.

Spit Emote Removed on TBC Classic PTR
The /spit emote has been removed on the Burning Crusade Classic PTR. Players can no longer target others with the emote, however they can still spit on the ground.

It is speculated that this change is a result of people spamming /spit on players riding the Reawakened Phase-Hunter mount, the reward for purchasing the Burning Crusade Deluxe Edition.



Lead Game Designer Jeremy Feasel tweeted that he's having a look at cleaning up toxicity in the game, so this could be one of many changes to come.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Upcoming Shards of Domination Set Bonus Buffs, Spit Emote Removed on TBC Classic PTR started by Lumy View original post
Comments 563 Comments
  1. Voidism's Avatar
    Ah yes, only remove it when it might impact sales. Classy.

    While I support the removal of targeted spits, this is yet more performative shallow nonsense where only profits are the motivator behind the change - not the abuse.

    Not to mention, it paint us players as the main problem of their internal issues.
  1. TEHPALLYTANK's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kodemonkee View Post
    People getting offended by a /spit emote in a game have bigger issues they should get checked instead of removing this.
    People clutching at pearls over being unable to target players with the /spit emote have an even bigger issue (aside from failing at reading comprehension, or stopping reading before finishing a whole sentence), they're literally throwing tantrums on a forum over a relatively minor method of harassment being made slightly more time-consuming to engage in.

    I think it is a sensible decision from the perspective of shaping player behavior, however I think the timing is just plain dumb, because they still haven't actually addressed any the major issues outlined in the lawsuit filed against them by the State of California regarding their mistreatment of employees.

    It reads likes virtue signalling in an attempt to garner some sympathy to avoid further drops in the stock price of ATVI, at least from my perspective of the issue.
  1. exochaft's Avatar
    Seems to be that a lot of people don't know that spitting on someone can be a sign of good luck or warding evil in some cultures. I've actually have met people who still embrace spitting on someone as good luck, so it's not like it's never seen as this anymore.

    Regardless, the way Blizz is tackling this is all wrong and can easily be worked around. Simple solution would be making /ignore suppresses not only chat from the offending player, but also any emotes. The timing and knee-jerk methodology screams deflection and virtue signaling when they're desperate for good press. Making decisions purely on emotions is never a good thing, as it rarely ever results in the right thing being done.
  1. Darkeon's Avatar
    Spitting is only allowed when it's towards female employees of multibillion dollars companies.
  1. Feindy's Avatar
    why not link the secod tweet too?

    "If Blizzard really wants to be clever about this, they should add the ability to spit on players back into the store as a microtransaction at the same price as the Warpstalker mount"

    so, yeah
  1. Lora's Avatar
    this literally changes nothing. people will just spit on the ground instead of it saying its at whatever player. they could also easily use any other emote to taunt them and this is a fucking joke to be honest. spitting emotes arent the problem. sexual harassment and actual toxicity like threats, derogative insults etc are.
  1. Puupi's Avatar
    lol Blizzard. How could one be more out of touch?!
  1. Biomega's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sinyc View Post
    So PvP/killing other players in the game is out of scope because its "just a game", but another action IN THE GAME is somehow now IN SCOPE and causing emotional harm??? huh?
    That's not what I'm saying. At all. I wasn't making a distinction based on something being "a game" or "in the game", I was making a distinction between actions that primarily impact the player character versus actions that primarily (or disproportionately) impact the player. That's not to say that someone killing a character doesn't ever impact the player; but that there is a very big difference between "killing" a character and being abusive towards the player, and those actions don't map to real-life equivalents how some people have very simplistically said. Sure killing someone is much more severe than spitting on someone IN REAL LIFE, but those actions don't work the same way or don't map the same way onto in-game actions.
  1. Fabinas's Avatar
    Doesn't matter.

    Let 'em try remove my sig.
  1. Redroniksre's Avatar
    I mean the fact that people are bitching they now can't spit on people with the mount, coupled with the fact there is a apparently a weakaura that does it automatically is pretty funny. The fact that those people are so petty that they would spend time doing something that, in their own words "Doesn't hurt anyone" is a little bit sad though.
  1. IKT's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by TheRevenantHero View Post
    I'm not upset about the flirt lines. I'm just surprised they didn't touch the sexual flirt lines considering the lawsuit they're dealing with.
    So you are upset about the lines because you're wishing they would do something about them. It's ok, I'm sure they will soon enough and everything can become Disneyfied.
  1. Orby's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Redroniksre View Post
    I mean the fact that people are bitching they now can't spit on people with the mount, coupled with the fact there is a apparently a weakaura that does it automatically is pretty funny. The fact that those people are so petty that they would spend time doing something that, in their own words "Doesn't hurt anyone" is a little bit sad though.

    Fear not I am sure Blizzard will get to banning these ones too

    /moon
    /poke
    /punch
    /insult
    /point
    /yawn
    /cough
    /cringe
    /groan
    /laugh
    /mock
    /point
    /rofl
    /slap
    /snicker
    /snub
    /stare
    /taunt
    /stink
    /threaten

    Does anyone think removing an emote is gonna stop people? what you gonna do when people find replacements, you gonna remove all the emotes. What if people start using toys, gonna remove the toys? Blizzard thinks removing stuff is the answer to solving a problem.

    As someone who had been /spit on because I had a store mount (through 6 month sub not by actual purchase) I tend to side with the emote users, hell most of the time when someone used /spit on me I kind of missed because I was busy doing something else. I gotta say if anyone felt threatened by an emote need a reality check, people are far worse in the real world, you get literally spit on out there lol. Maybe because I have been abused so badly at work at this point that an emote is a small fish to me.

    I dunno why I care really I quit the game back in January Blizzard can do whatever they want.
  1. Hyrja's Avatar
    Feasel is in charge of removing toxicity from the game? Rip freedom of speech if true, this guy is crazy. He had "fighting fascists" in his Twitter bio last year when the blm and antifa were burning down cities.
  1. Kumorii's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kodemonkee View Post
    People getting offended by a /spit emote in a game have bigger issues they should get checked instead of removing this.
    TO play the devils advocate. It's not about the spitting per se... it's about the masses of people who shows negative attitude every day to specific people. It's pretty human to take constant negative feedback as something, well, negative. Doesn't matter which platform this is done on. If you have X amount of people posting "dumb" or hell, even "/spit" on facebook and twitter. The people being targeted will obviously start to feel like they are hunted, singled out, doesn't belong and they might not even know why etc etc.
  1. tru's Avatar
    Oh my pixelated eyes couldn't stand the though of being spat upon. Oh I may finally come out of my hole and join the real world again. Thank you blizzard for being the champions of safe spaces.../s
  1. George's Avatar
    Good riddance! The /spit emote was always nasty when used to insult opponents in PvP. I don't know why it was implemented in the first place or why it wasn't removed years ago when everyone saw how it was used. I hope it is disabled when interacting with players in World of Warcraft as well.
  1. Unholyvamp's Avatar
    Can we please stop re-posting what random streamers are posting on twitter?
  1. mbit's Avatar
    1. have culture around shaming for bad behaviour
    2. sperg out people are shaming for buying shop shit

    noo not the profits, no virtual spitting boys, thats reserved for the cosby suite!
  1. Terahertz's Avatar
    Lmao can't wait for them to remove all emotes against players then. Can't have players have any effective way of voicing disapproval of Blizzard's actions. Literally the only reason why'd care enough to do this bullshit.

    Here's a list of emotes you can use instead of /spit:

    /angry
    /attacktarget
    /blame
    /cringe
    /frown
    /glare
    /golfclap
    /groan
    /insult
    /incoming
    /lol
    /rofl
    /mock
    /shoo
    /pity
    /snicker
    /stink
    /surprised

    and if you want to continue using /spit, make a macro like this:

    /point
    /spit

    makes it clear your spit is meant for them.
  1. sylenna's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Good riddance! The /spit emote was always nasty when used to insult opponents in PvP. I don't know why it was implemented in the first place or why it wasn't removed years ago when everyone saw how it was used. I hope it is disabled when interacting with players in World of Warcraft as well.
    yeah, nothing better to get ganked by five sweats out of nowhere who jump and spit until you disable WM forever. it was always a disrespectful emote.

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