World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

World of Warcraft has had quite an eventful year. We released the newest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, on November 13. The first raid opened up in early December, and players have had a go at some of Draenor’s most fearsome foes. We marked the 10-year World of Warcraft and 20-year Warcraft anniversaries in-game and with an incredible celebration at BlizzCon last month; debuted a new documentary, World of Warcraft: Looking for Group, on YouTube and Hulu; and released a new pet to support the American Red Cross and their Ebola relief efforts in Africa—and we’re not done yet.

We’re excited about what’s ahead in 2015, and we wanted to give you a glimpse at some of the long-term projects we’re working on, as well as some features planned for the Patch 6.1 update, which will be hitting the Public Test Realm (PTR) soon.

Feeling Legendary
We hope everyone is enjoying the Legendary quest line with Khadgar, the next step of which opens up with the Blackrock Foundry raid in the new year. We’re already working on the steps after that, and the quest line will continue in Patch 6.1, where the first-ever Legendary Follower (with suitably Legendary abilities) will be available to join your Garrison. If you’re a fan of collecting Followers but haven’t set out on the Legendary quest line, now is a good time to get started!

Pepe’s Favorite New Feature
We’re working on the ability to send out Tweets—including screenshots—directly from within WoW, making it easier than ever to let friends know about your Achievements and item drops. We’ll be testing this functionality on the Patch 6.1 PTR.

Flight Master Competency
We have some new tech in the works that will allow flight masters to provide more-direct routes to your destination, regardless of the flight points your character knows. This’ll mean fewer roundabout routes; the flight masters will instead always try to send you on the shortest existing route. Hopefully, this will get you to your destination faster.

All About That Base
Garrison improvements, tweaks, and additions are on the horizon. While we’re working on some bigger additions for later on, we have a lot of other changes and additions you’ll see on the next PTR. We’re working on making visiting your friends’ Garrisons even more rewarding, with a daily visitor to set you and your friends on a fun random task (complete with rewards, Achievements, and a meta-Achievement for finishing all of the tasks). We’ll have awesome new items to spend your Garrison Resources on, new Missions to complete with fun new rewards, new items to change your Followers with, a new tier of Garrison-invasion difficulty for the most tenacious of defenders among you (can your Garrison withstand a world boss?), new profession-building Missions, and a whole lot more!

New Ways to Play
We’re exploring the possibility of giving players a way to buy tradable game-time tokens for the purpose of exchanging them in-game with other players for gold. Our current thought on this is that it would give players a way to use their surplus gold to cover some of their subscription cost, while giving players who might have less play time an option for acquiring gold from other players through a legit and secure system. A few other online games offer a similar option, and players have suggested that they’d be interested in seeing something along those lines in WoW. We agree it could be a good fit for the game, and we look forward to any feedback you have as we continue to look into this feature.

Collecting Your Heirlooms
We’re pretty far along in development on the much-talked-about Heirloom tab. This will bring the whole Heirloom system into a single account-wide collection UI and provide a clear purchase/upgrade path for all items. Heirlooms already on characters will be collected into the new UI (similar to other Collections features), base-level Heirlooms will be purchasable from vendors, and upgrade tokens that can be used on Heirlooms to raise their effectiveness to additional level caps will be obtainable through different forms of content. We’ll be looking for your feedback on the new system when the 6.1 PTR goes live.

eSports’in
The new War Games skirmishes feature allows anyone to run an online tournament, and we’re excited to see even more community-run tournaments in 2015. We’ll of course be running tournaments with our eSports partners as well, and will release details as those plans are finalized. As you saw at the Arena World Championship, we’ve come up with an improved UI to help viewers better follow the action, but we’ve been working on a complete overhaul for next year—with the goal of making it widely available for use in player-run tournaments, partner tournaments, and online casting. We hope to be able to share more soon.

You’re More Beautiful Every Day
As we discussed in the recent preview, new Blood Elf models are on their way, and we’re looking to get them in-game in an upcoming patch. Alongside the new Blood Elf models we’ll also be implementing a couple of tweaks and fixes for other character models, based on player and our own internal feedback, with some additional changes to come in future patches.

Ashran So Far
We’re continuing to focus on realm pairing and tech changes to help ensure more even fights between the Alliance and the Horde, as well as reduce the queue times to get into the PvP zone for those realms experiencing them. Further into the coming year our focus will be on updating and expanding the content Ashran offers in big new ways, but we’ll have more info on that as we get closer to patches beyond 6.1.

Game Ogre
Raiders are continuing to enjoy Highmaul in all its ogre-y glory, and we’re watching how things play out as the last couple wings open in Raid Finder difficulty. While progression through Highmaul continues, Warlord Blackhand is eagerly awaiting your arrival in the Blackrock Foundry raid. We’re expecting Blackrock Foundry to become available in February. We’ll announce specific dates once we’ve seen more of how Highmaul progression . . . progresses.

. . . And Beyond
We have a ton of awesome content planned for next year, as well as some fun surprises, and we can’t wait to share more. See you in-game!

I'd like to take this opportunity to provide some information about heirlooms:

• We plan to them available again with patch 6.1. They are currently being redesigned to fit the new stat system.
• The heirlooms will be sold for gold and base level will go up to level 60. Once you buy a heirloom, it will be available for all characters on your account, as toys and pet are now.
• The base heirlooms can be upgraded to Tier 2 (usable up to level 90) and Tier 3 (usable up to level 100) in exchange for emblems that will be obtained as a reward for some tasks completed within the game.

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts

• Outposts
  
  • [Requires a realm restart.] Completing a quest for a newly swapped Outpost building should no longer cause it to incorrectly revert back to a pre-swapped state.

Classes

• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera should now work correctly with the Glyph of Mirrored Blades.
• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Clarity of Will's (Discipline) protective ward on a critical effect should now be correctly reduced by Battle Fatigue in PvP combat.
  • Glyphs
    
    • Glyph of the Inquisitor should now correctly be dealing self-damage against the Priest (with a chance to break crowd control effects) in PvP combat against enemy players with glyphed crowd control abilities that removes damage over time effects on the target.
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Assassination
    
    • Envenom should no longer incorrectly consume all of the Rogue's combo points if the ability misses or was dodged.
  • Subtlety
    
    • Hemorrhage periodic effect should now be able to critically strike.

Quests

• Talador
  
  • [Requires a realm restart.] Socrethar's Demise: Resolved an issue that could cause Socrethar to become unattackable.
• Legacy
  
  • Report to the King: Resolved an issue where completing this quest was incorrectly causing Hero's Call: Redridge Mountains! and My Son, the Prince to become unavailable
  • Warning the Warchief: Resolved an issue where completing this quest was incorrectly causing Machines of War and Enemies Below to become unavailable.

Creatures and NPCs

• Frostfire Ridge
  
  • Iron Cannoneers no longer drop Iron Horde Scraps.
• Gorgrond
  
  • Iron Banshee should now correctly award credit towards completing Assault on the Pit.

Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios

• Dungeons
  
  • The Everbloom
    
    • Xeri'tac: Resolved an issue that could cause Venom-Crazed Pale One to not spawn in correctly.

PvP

• Ashran
  
  • Fangraal and Kronus now costs 3000 Artifact Fragments to summon (up from 1000).

Items

• Primal Spirit should now be dropping more frequently while harvesting mineral and herb nodes outside of the Garrison, from Skinning, and in a satchel obtained by completing the daily Fishing quest from the Garrison Fishing Shack.
• Potions purchased from the Brawler's Guild are now bind on pickup.
• Guide: Sharpshooting should now correctly have a chance to drop for Hunters from rare Draenor NPCs and creatures.
• Kowalski's Music Box should now correctly apply its soothing effect to targets that are not in combat.
• World Shrinker's effect is now removed when mounting up.

UI

• Premade Groups should no longer display a Scenarios category for characters that are above level 90.

We wanted to let you know that we are aware of reports that neither Tectus nor Ko'ragh are dropping loot in the second wing of Highmaul. We are currently looking into those reports and hope to have the issue resolved as quickly as possible.

We're monitoring the situation and will provide details as they become available.

Update
It looks like we were able to implement a resolution for the issue that should allow any new instances of the raid to function correctly. Going forward bosses will drop loot normally.

We are looking into possible resolutions for those impacted by the issue prior to the fix and will provide an update as soon as we know more.

Update 2 12/17 6:30 pm
We had hoped that we would be able to implement a resolution to those impacted by the earlier boss loot issue so that additional contact would not be necessary but unfortunately it seems that will not be possible.

If you killed the first and/or third boss in the Arcane Sanctum (2nd Wing of Highmaul) this morning and did not receive any loot, neither gold nor items, please submit a ticket though our Support Site and our In-Game Support staff will work to address the issue.

Thank you all for your patience.

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts

• Garrison Buildings
  
  • Frostwall Mines: Mine Guards should now scale with the player's character level.
  • Frostwall Mines Level 3: Mine Guards now have significantly more health and damage.

Classes

• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Prismatic Crystal now transfers only 75% of total damage on Critical Hits, and transfers only 50% of total damage on Multistrikes while in PvP combat.
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Destruction
    
    • [Hotfix currently in-testing] Havoc now has a base cooldown of 20 seconds (down from 25 seconds).

Creatures and NPCs

• Zidormi in Dustwallow Marsh should now correctly send players back in time to visit old Theramore.

Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios

• Satchel of Savage Mysteries now has a guaranteed chance to award a piece of Heroic Dungeon loot (item level 630 rare) appropriate for the character's loot specialization.
  
  • Developer Commentary: We’re aware of excessive queue times for Heroic Dungeons. To help players have a better experience in Dungeon Finder, we’re expanding the rewards for Satchel of Savage Mysteries to award Heroic Dungeon loot in addition to the guaranteed Augment Rune, and a chance to contain a mount, Follower enhancement token, Battle Pet, or Battle-Stone. The satchel will remain Bind on Account and we'll continue to monitor Dungeon Finder queues and iterate as needed to ensure a great experience for everyone.
• Raids
  
  • Highmaul
    
    • The Butcher now has a chance to drop a Green Winter Hat.
    • Brackenspore: Elements of the fight, such as hostile fungus and beneficial mushrooms should now be visible from further away during the encounter on Mythic difficulty.
    • Twin Ogron: Resolved a situation where pulling Twin Ogron and having them despawn could cause the Imperator Mar'gok encounter to not work correctly on Mythic difficulty.

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts

• Garrison Buildings
  
  • A hotfix in testing from December 11 for the Inn has been implemented. The achievement, Stay Awhile and Listen now only requires the character to complete 10 of the 20 Inn quests (down from all 20).

Creatures and NPCs

• Shadowmoon Valley
  
  • Yggdrel now deals less damage with the Entangling Vine ability.

Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios

• [Hotfix currently in-testing] Messages for obtaining an Augment Rune are no longer broadcasting to the party or raid group.
• Raids
  
  • Highmaul
    
    • Tectus' health has been reduced by about 15% when the raid is scaled to 10 players on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulties. As the raid scales up to a maximum of 30 players, Tectus' health for 30 players remains roughly unchanged from before this hotfix.

Professions

• Enchanting
  
  • [Hotfix currently in-testing] Mark of Blackrock can no longer trigger its effect for the first 40 seconds after equipping the weapon.

UI

• Resolved an issue where having a player join the Dungeon Finder or Raid Finder group just as another player was leaving could cause the button to queue up for additional players to remain greyed out for the rest of the group.
• Resolved an issue where the Darkmoon Faire was not showing up in the in-game calendar past December 2014.

These changes went live with today’s restarts. In addition, players who had already switched their outpost buildings prior to today should now be able to access the quests and follower associated with the new building.

Just a quick update: we're working on a fix for the issues with buildings reverting as well as being unable to actually pick up the follower. I don't have a solid ETA just yet on when that will apply.

PvP
glad sanctum conquest goes towards the Ashran bonus, right? I put in a ticket and got a super canned answer
it does not (holinka)

~100% of Top 100 in 3v3 arena EU and US = Alliance. "Ah well, it is time for the alliance to shine." - Holinka 2014
I never said that (holinka)

A lot of ppl are wondering how many times a week you can get an epic drop from a daily Ashran win?
Once per week (holinka)

Neither faction nor class representation is anywhere close to balanced.. Sad to see the game in such state.
Many players are overly fixated on representation but probably because it is the only metric to look at. (holinka)

To celebrate Winter Veil, we’re offering holiday savings of 50% on select World of Warcraft mounts and pets. Through January 5, 2015, you can take advantage of the following deals in the Battle.net Shop:

• World of Warcraft Pets — Now $5 (Reg. $10)
• World of Warcraft Mounts — Now $12.50 (Reg. $25)

All of these pets and mounts are fully giftable. Be sure to pick them up soon, because these deals end January 5, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. PST.[/u]

Class Tuning Changes

• Please note, the following class tuning changes are still undergoing testing and will be implemented as soon as possible.
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Beast Mastery
    
    • Improved Focus Fire now grants a 5% increase (up from 2%) to attack power for every stack of Frenzy that had been consumed.
  • Survival
    
    • Serpent Sting damage has increased by 60%.
• Monk (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • General
    
    • Stance of the Fierce Tiger now increases all damage dealt by 5% (down from 10%).
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Assassination
    
    • Venomous Wounds' damage has increased by 20%.
  • Combat
    
    • Blade Flurry now also strikes up to 4 additional nearby opponents for 35% of normal damage (up from 30%).
  • Subtlety
    
    • Backstab damage has increased by 20%.
    • Hemorrhage damage has increased by 30%.

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts

• [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Map Icon for the Garrison should now appear correctly for characters that had undergone a faction change.
• [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Alliance Tier 3 Garrison: Dungeoneer's Training Dummy for healing and damage have swapped places so melee classes are less likely to trigger the tanking dummy by accident.
• Garrison Buildings
  
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Barn: Captured beasts can now stack to 20 (up from not being stackable).
  • Dwarven Bunker/War Mill: Armor transmogrification items obtained from the Dwarven Bunker/War Mill are now truly account-bound and can be sent to other characters on the same Battle.net account.
  • Gladiator's Sanctum: Corrected an issue that allowed a losing player to claim loot from victor's chest when multiple players died near-simultaneously.
  • Stables: Corrected an issue where players could complete The Stable Master achievement without owning a Level 3 Stable.

Classes

• Druid (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Balance
    
    • Sunfall (Starfall modified by Glyph of the Solstice) should now also be dealing 33% less damage in PvP combat.
    • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Sunfall should no longer incorrectly have a chance to trigger Nature's Vigil.
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera should now interact correctly with Glyph of Deterrence.
• Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Greater Invisibility should now correctly be counting as dispelling two damage over time effects instead of canceling them.
  • Armor Sets
    
    • PvP 2-piece set bonus for Mages should now be correctly consuming stacks of the buff while casting Frostfire Bolt.
• Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
  
  • Talents
    
    • Hand of Purity should no longer incorrectly affect damage over time abilities that are immune from this damage reduction effect.
    • Selfless Healer should now be correctly dispelled instead of having only 1 stack dispelled at a time.
  • Armor Sets
    
    • PvP 2-piece set bonus for Retribution Paladins, Righteous Determination should now be dispellable.

Quests

• Frostfire Ridge
  
  • Assault on Magnarok: Increased the spawn rates for creatures and NPCs for the quest.
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Flames of the Earth: Players are now able to free Magma Elementals without tap credit and completion credit for the quest is now shared amongst all characters in the party.
• Nagrand
  
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Removing the Reinforcements: Resolved an issue where the quest could not be completed if the character had already completed And Justice for Thrall.
  • THAELIN!: Resolved an issue where players may be able to complete the quest if they had already completed And Justice for Thrall.

World Environment

• [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Resolved an issue that could cause The August Celestials daily quests to not match up in a cross-realm zone.

Creatures and NPCs

• A large number of rare creatures and NPCs on Draenor can now be tapped by players on both factions.
• Gorgrond
  
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Poundfist now has 40% more health and increased the upper limit on the number of players his health can scale to.
• Spires of Arak
  
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Befuddled Relic-Seeker, Highmaul Relic-Seeker, and Highmaul Skullcrusher should no longer drop dead after being pickpocketed.

Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios

• Raids
  
  • Highmaul
    
    • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Raid Finder difficulty Highmaul should now be creating raid groups comprised of 2 tanks, 5 healers, and 18 damage dealers (instead of forming raid groups with 6 healers).
    • Kargath Bladefist: Players should no longer be getting trapped in the tiger pit after defeating Kargath Bladefist.
    • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] Brackenspore: Creeping Moss' healing dealt to fungal spawn will now show up in the Combat Log.
    • Brackenspore: Burning Infusion now increases damage and healing dealt by 13% per stack (up from 10% per stack) and decays more slowly at a rate of 1 stack every 4 seconds (up from 1 stack every 2 seconds).
    • Ko'ragh: DPS caster trinkets should now correctly have a chance to trigger its effects on attacks that have been completely absorbed by Ko'ragh's Nullification Barrier.
    • Imperator Mar'gok's Mark of Chaos abilities should now be correctly applied to all characters regardless of range.

PvP

• Ashran
  
  • PvP vendors in Stormshield and Warspear now have Pre-Mixed Pot of Noodles for sale to Pandaren characters.
  • Conquest Primal Gladiator trinkets have had their values adjusted proportionally to the Honor Primal Combatant trinkets.
  • Players are now removed from a Dungeon Finder or Raid Finder group upon accepting the queue to enter Ashran.
  • Addressed an additional issue that could cause faction Captains to stop spawning.
  • Events in Ashran should now occurring more frequently.
  • [Hotfix still undergoing testing] A Few Artifact Fragments should no longer be awarding more reputation than intended.

Items

• Everbloom Seed Pouch no longer affects other players.
• Tome of the Clear Mind now stacks to 200 (up from 20).

Classes
Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Why on earth would you nerf BM when it was already terrible? Or is it an oversight that it got collateral nerfed by MM?
.That Kill Shot change has an extremely trivial (<1%) impact on Beast Mastery. With MM nerfed, BM should get some play now. (Celestalon)
Problem is BM was already low.
.It's difficult to say anything conclusive (UP or not) about a spec that only 1-3% of hunters play in raids. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
You realize Gladiator is still ahead of both arms and fury on ST right? Fury is close, though.
It's almost as if that was the goal... (WatcherDev)

PvP
Changing previous tweet: Looking for feedback on extra damage debuff to tank flag carriers IN RBGs. Too much? Too little? Just right? (holinka)
FYI: In RBGs only, tanks take extra damage when carrying the flag. They do not in normal battlegrounds. (holinka)

Seems like the pvp scene is lacking control of balance changes this expansion.
All hotfixes aren't released at once. (holinka)

Lore
Morning Dave, is it possible to be both undead and demon? For example, Xavius died and his disembodied soul was separated from
Lorewise, I think so. In game terms we choose one or the other for mechanics reasons (shackle undead, etc!) (DaveKosak)

Garrisons
Even with a barracks and level 3 inn, a person with only lvl100 followers often ends up with ZERO missions.
The intent was to taper off missions as you leveled so it felt like you had to check in less, but were more rewarded (1/2) (Muffinus)
In retrospect, missions are probably more fun than anticipated, it's good feedback, we hear you. (Muffinus)