World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Join Brann Bronzebeard’s expedition, explore Ulduar, and take part in an epic tournament as the forces of Azeroth prepare for a confrontation with the Lich King in the next content phase of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. Here’s the complete schedule:

Available Starting January 17
Dungeon and Raid Emblem Changes
A new Emblem type is now available—the Emblem of Conquest. Emblems of Conquest can be obtained from all bosses in Ulduar and from the “Proof of Demise” Heroic Dungeon daily quests.

Emblems of Valor can now be obtained from all Heroic dungeon bosses, and from the Normal Dungeon daily quests “Timear Foresees…”.

Emblems of Heroism can no longer be obtained from Heroic dungeon bosses. You can exchange Emblems of Conquest or Valor for Emblems of Heroism at a money changer in Dalaran, such as Usuri Brightcoin located at The Cantrips & Crows Tavern in The Underbelly.

New Emblem of Conquest Vendors
New vendors in Dalaran located in the Sunreaver’s Sanctuary for the Horde and The Silver Enclave for the Alliance now accept Emblems of Conquest in exchange for powerful loot like neck, waist, hands, and leg slot items, as well as select Raid Set items and Deadly Gladiator PvP Sets.

The Argent Tournament Begins!
As the might of the Scourge wanes under the pressure of Azeroth's heroes, the Argent Crusade have taken a foothold in Arthas's backyard. Off the northeastern coast of Icecrown, they have sounded the call for the most bold and brave adventurers of the Horde and Alliance to take part in the Argent Tournament. Representatives of all ten faction capitals, from Undercity to The Exodar, have traveled to the tournament grounds to find champions among their heroes who will prepare for the inevitable battle against the enemy of all living beings, the Lich King.

While the tournament grounds are still under construction, you can still travel to Icecrown and visit the Argent Tournament Grounds daily quest hub to prepare for the challenges ahead.

Conquer the Arena in Season 6
After the regional weekly maintenance starting on January 17, a new Arena Season will begin. At the end of Season 6, qualifying players will receive the “Furious Gladiator” title and the fearsome Furious Gladiator’s Frost Wyrm mount. Rating requirements to obtain Furious Gladiator’s gear remains unchanged from Season 5. Also, gear from previous Arena Seasons, including Season 5 gear, can be obtained from Arena and Honor vendors with adjusted costs in some cases, and no rating requirements across the board.

Titan Rune Dungeons
A new Mysterious Titanic Relic now looms near the entrance of all level 80 Heroic dungeons. Once your party interacts with it and channels its power, the Relic will cause all enemies in the dungeon to gain additional health and damage and additional effects, depending on the dungeon.

Gear that formerly dropped in Normal 10-player versions of Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and The Obsidian Sanctum can now drop from dungeon bosses when they’re under the effects of the Mysterious Titanic Relic.

Available Starting January 19
New Raid: Ulduar
For millennia, Ulduar has remained undisturbed by mortals, far away from their concerns and their struggles. Yet since its recent discovery, many have wondered what the structure's original purpose may have been. Some thought it a city, built to herald the glory of its makers; some thought it a vault containing innumerable treasures, perhaps even relics of the mighty Titans themselves. Such speculations were wrong. Beyond Ulduar's gates lies no city, no treasure vault, no final answer to the Titan's mysteries. All that awaits those who dare set foot in Ulduar is a horror even the Titans could not, would not destroy, an evil they merely... contained.

This massive facility was constructed by the Titans to imprison an unspeakable threat to all life on Azeroth. Unearth its mysteries and claim the rewards therein—but try not to lose your mind in the process.

Raid bosses: Flame Leviathan, Ignis the Furnace Master, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor, The Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim, Mimiron, Hodir, General Vezax, Yogg-Saron, Algalon the Observer

Level: 80
Location: Storm Peaks, Northrend

Beneath ancient Ulduar, the Old God of death lies, whispering.... Tread carefully, or its prison will become your tomb.

Is this item broken or you need a full set for it to work?

Class set items from Mythic Vault of the Incarnates and Elite PVP are intended to display lightning visual effects. These effects are typically attached to the shoulder and helm items. Unfortunately we have a bug that has prevented many of them from functioning as intended.

The bug will be fixed with the launch of 10.0.5.

The Gleaming Incarnate Thunderstone, which you get as a reward for earning the Dragonflight Keystone Hero: Season 1 achievement, is intended to grant the lightning visual effect to non-Mythic difficulty class sets (and to grant the non-lightning version to the Mythic or Elite sets). So if you have the Normal difficulty shoulder appearance for your tier set, using this item will grant an additional appearance with the same color and added lightning effects. This applies to any item appearances you have already unlocked or unlock in the future, so unlocking your Heroic shoulders in the future will also immediately the lightning-infused equivalent.

Due to the aforementioned bug, this was likely unclear. You may also need to log out and log back in for these appearances to appear in your collection.

Classes

• Demon Hunter
  
  • [With weekly restarts] The Hunt’s damage over time effect no longer deals an additional tick on application. Damage dealt over the total duration remains unchanged.
    
  • Vengeance
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Thick Skin armor bonus increased to 130% (was 100%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Calcified Skin initial damage reduction value increased to 12% (was 10%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Painbringer duration increased to 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
      
• Druid
  
  • Feral
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All ability damage dealt increased by 3%.
      
• Evoker
  
  • Devastation
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Fire Breath damage increased by 10% for Devastation specialization only. Does not apply to PvP combat.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Lay Waste increases Deep Breath damage by 15%/30%, (was 10%/20%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Eternity Surge damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Firestorm damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Eye of Infinity generates 2 Essence on critical strike (was 1 Essence).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Spellweaver's Dominance increases critical strike damage to 230% (was 220%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Iridescence damage bonus increased to 20% (was 15%).
      
• Hunter
  
  • Survival
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All ability damage and pet damage increased by 2%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Butchery and Carve damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Fury of the Eagle damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Wildfire Bomb damage increased by 15%.
      
• Mage
  
  • Fire
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Flamestrike damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Living Bomb damage increased by 25%.
      
  • Frost
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Frostbolt damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Ray of Frost damage increased by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.
      
• Monk
  
  • Brewmaster
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Efficacy of Stagger against Magical damage increased to 45% (was 35%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Cooldown of Celestial Brew reduced to 45 sec (was 60).
      
  • Mistweaver
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All healing increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Vivify healing increased by an additional 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 6%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick damage increased by 8%
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger Palm damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Spinning Crane Kick damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Awakened Faeline now transfers 70% of Spinning Crane Kick's damage into healing (was 60%).
      
• Paladin
  
  • Retribution
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Crusader Strike Damage increased by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Blade of Justice damage increased by 25%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Final Reckoning damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Shield of Vengeance cooldown reduced to 90 sec (was 120).
      
    • Developers’ notes: Some of Retribution’s main rotational buttons do not feel as good to press as we’d like so we’re making some changes to help improve these abilities. Additionally, their survivability isn’t where we would like so we’re making some improvements to their defensive kit as well. We are looking at Retribution as a whole and will have more to share in the future.
      
• Priest
  
  • Holy
    
    • [With weekly restarts] All healing done increased by 3%.
      
  • Shadow
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Focused Will provides 10% damage reduction for Shadow (down from 15%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Blast damage increased by 15% (Shadow only).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Flay damage increased by 15% (this includes Mind Flay: Insanity, but not the proc from Idol of C’Thun).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Mind Spike damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Void Torrent damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Devouring Plague damage increased by 15%.
      
    • Developers’ notes: These changes are aimed at improving Shadow’s single target DPS. The change to Focused Will is a targeted change for PvP to reduce Shadow’s survivability.
      
• Rogue
  
  • Outlaw
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced Precise Cuts (Talent) bonus to Blade Flurry damage per missing target below its maximum to 2% (was 3%).
      
      • Developers’ notes: As we monitor the developing M+ meta and related data, we have recognized that Outlaw is overperforming. We expect this change will reduce Outlaw’s damage output in encounters with target count above 1 and below 8, as their damage is currently more consistent than we intend for dungeons and encounters that frequently present those circumstances.
        
• Warlock
  
  • Fixed an issue where Demon Armor from the Conflict and Strife essence persisted outside of Battle for Azeroth zones.
    
  • Affliction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Agony damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Corruption damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Drain Soul damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Pandemic Invocation damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Seed of Corruption damage increased by 5%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Bolt damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Siphon Life damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Unstable Affliction backlash damage is no longer increased from increased damage dealt modifiers or effects that increase Unstable Affliction's damage.
      
  • Destruction
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Channel Demonfire damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Rain of Fire damage increased by 15%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Soul Fire damage increased by 20%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Infernal and Blasphemy Immolation damage increased by 10%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Conflagrate damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Immolate damage increased by 10%. Does not apply to PvP.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Incinerate damage increased by 15%. Does not apply to PvP.
      

Dungeons and Raids

• The Nokhud Offensive
  
  • Granyth
    
    • Fixed an issue where multiple players could interact with the ballista at the same time and each fire an arrow.
      
  • Teera and Maruuk
    
    • Fixed an issue where Blessing of Protection allowed players to be immune to the effects of Teera's Gale Arrow.
      
• Ruby Life Pools
  
  • Melidrussa Chillworn
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced the damage of triggering a Hailbomb by 40%.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced party-wide AoE damage on the initial cast of Hailbombs by 66%
      
      • Developers’ note: The initial on-cast hit from Hailbombs was never intended to be a large source of damage, and when scaled up on Mythic+ it is contributing more damage to the fight than we’d like, so we’re reining it in to give healers more breathing room to recover from Melidrussa’s other abilities.
        
  • Kokia Blazehoof
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced period damage of Searing Wounds by 25%
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Reduced damage of Scorched Earth by 25%
      
• Mythic+
  
  • Algeth’ar Academy
    
    • Fixed an issue where some enemies near Vexamus did not provide Enemy Forces credit, and adjusted Enemy Forces requirements accordingly
      
    • Developers’ note: This will make enemies in the dungeon "appear" to grant slightly less Enemy Forces credit, but defeating the enemies affected by this change was required to engage Vexamus, so there shouldn't be any real gameplay impact.
      
• Vault of the Incarnates
  
  • Raszageth
    
    • Reduced the push effect of Hurricane Wing on Mythic difficulty.
      

Player versus Player

• Classes
  
  • Demon Hunter
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Soul Rending leech bonus reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
      
    • Havoc
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Glimpse (PvP Talent) damage reduction reduced to 35% (was 75%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Essence Break damage bonus for Chaos Strike and Blade Dance reduced by 37.5% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Soulrend damage reduced by 16.7% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: We have noticed Havoc Demon Hunter overperforming in several facets of PvP including personal survivability, burst damage, and overall DPS. We’re taking action to reduce their effectiveness in these areas while still aiming to keep them competitive.
        
  • Evoker
    
    • Preservation
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Energy Loop’s mana regeneration reduced by 25% in PvP combat.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Energy Loop’s mana restoration has been overperforming compared to its contribution in PvE due to game-wide reduced mana regeneration within PvP instances. We’re adjusting this to bring it in line with expected benefits, but still want this effect to remain a powerful option as we feel it can lead to compelling decision making with Essence resources.
          
  • Mage
    
    • Arcane
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Siphon Storm’s effectiveness has been reduced by 50% in PvP combat.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Siphon Storm has been a culprit for one-shot scenarios, so we are adjusting its effectiveness down heavily.
          
    • Frost
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Reduced Glacial Spike's damage increased from Mastery: Icicles by 25%. This will be reflected in the tooltip in a later patch.
        
        • Developers’ notes: Siphon Storm has been a culprit for one-shot scenarios, so we are adjusting its effectiveness down heavily.
          
  • Monk
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Blackout Kick damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 15%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Tiger's Palm damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 15%).
      
    • Mistweaver
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Rising Sun Kick now deals 12.5% additional damage in PvP (was 25%).
        
      • Developer’s note: We are looking to offset the incoming PvE buffs to Rising Sun Kick as we think it currently hits hard enough to be effective for Mistweaver in PvP.
        
  • Windwalker
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Thunderfist damage reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Skyreach increases critical strike chance by 30% in PvP Combat (was 50%).
      
    • [With weekly restarts] Fists of Fury damage increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
      
    • Developers’ notes: Windwalker burst has continued to be above a level we’re comfortable with. We’re targeting Thunderfist and Skyreach, as they have been large contributors to this. We’re also increasing their sustained damage, as we feel there is room for that to improve as their burst is reduced.
      
  • Priest
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Flash Heal healing is increased by 30% in PvP Combat (was 20%).
      
    • Holy
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Heal healing is increased by 35% in PvP Combat (was 25%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Holy Word: Serenity healing is increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: Holy received PvP reductions in casted healing effectiveness in previous patches that we now feel are unnecessary and are reverting. We also feel Holy Word: Serenity has not been as effective as we would like at handling burst damage, so we are increasing that as well.
        
    • Shadow
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Shadow Word: Death damage reduced by 30% in PvP Combat for Shadow only (was 20%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Mind Blast damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat for Shadow only.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Mind Spike damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Devouring Plague damage reduced by 25% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Vampiric Touch damage reduced by 5% in PvP Combat (was increased by 10%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] The trigger rate of Shadowy Insight has been reduced by 25% while in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] The trigger rate of Surge of Darkness has been reduced by 25% while in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: Shadow Priest has been widely overperforming, so we are looking to offset recent PvE buffs to them and reduce their power defensively through changes to Focused Will. We’re also reducing their instant proc damage availability as we feel Shadow Priests do not have to hard cast spells as often as we would like them to.
        
  • Rogue
    
    • Assassination
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Improved Garrote’s Garrote damage bonus reduced by 40% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Iron Wire damage reduction debuff now has a PvP duration of 4 seconds (was 8 seconds).
        
      • Developers’ notes: Assassination’s spread and single target Garrote pressure has been very high. We’re targeting this by decreasing the effectiveness of Improved Garrote. Iron Wire’s damage reduction effect has also felt too potent to us at preventing enemy pressure.
        
  • Warlock
    
    • Demonology
      
      • [With weekly restarts] Demonic Strength unleashes a Felstorm that deals 150% increased damage in PvP Combat (down from 400%).
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Demonfire damage increased by 75% in PvP Combat.
        
      • [With weekly restarts] Dreadbite damage reduced by 10% in PvP Combat.
        
      • Developers’ notes: We feel Demonic Strength can be a difficult spell to notice and has little counter play compared to Demonic Tyrant and its associated Demonfire casts. We’re looking to adjust Demonology’s burst sources while aiming to keep them at the same relative power. We also want to slightly reduce Demonology’s overall pressure by targeting Dreadbite.
        
  • Warrior
    
    • [With weekly restarts] Defensive Stance now reduces damage done by 15% (was 20%) in PvP combat.
      
      • Developers’ notes: Defensive Stance was adjusted in previous patches to address damage issues we no longer feel are present for Warriors. We’re increasing damage done in Defensive Stance to help increase their offensive pressure without affecting them defensively.
        

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

• Fixing an issue where Wintergrasp faction win conditions could be unintentionally reset, resulting in players not receiving the Essence of Wintergrasp buff.

Greetings,

As we near the release of patch 3.4.1 and Ulduar, one frequent topic is transfer and new character creation restrictions present on some of the largest realms in the US and EU. We understand the desire for players to play with their friends on these realms, and while these realms are not currently queuing, their population is still larger than the realms were designed for, and queues could return with the release of future content. There are many other very healthy and active realms available that are thriving, and we have no plans to lift realms restrictions on these realms in the near future.

We do recognize however that PvP has been cross realm for all of almost all of WoW’s existence, and that realm restrictions get in the way of utilizing team-less Arena that was added in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. As a result, we’ve implemented a system to allow you to group with players on other realms, and queue into Arena matches and Battlegrounds together. We feel that this is a sensible change considering that Arenas have been cross server since their inception in 2007, and Battlegrounds have been cross-realm since shortly after they were introduced back in original World of Warcraft.

We’ve enabled this functionality on the Wrath Classic PTR, and we’d love it if you wanted to hop in with some friends to help us test this.

How to use this:

In order to invite a player from a different realm, you’ll need to type /invite playername-realmname. So for example, if I was on the Classic PTR Realm 1 and I wanted to invite “Aggrend” from the Classic PTR Realm 2, I’d type (with no spaces):

/invite Aggrend-ClassicPTRRealm2

…and the other player would see the following:



From there you would be placed into a cross-realm group:



At this point, the group leader could queue for Battlegrounds or Arenas as normal. You will join the same match, be placed on the same team, and gain honor and arena rating as you would with any normal Arena or Battleground group.

Please note that this can only be used to allow players on the same faction to group with each other cross-realm. Additionally, this system may only be used to queue for pvp and will not allow you join the group leader’s layer in the outdoor world, or enter non-BG, non-Arena dungeons or raid instances with the group leader in any way. Party chat functions as you’d expect it to, but past chatting and doing Arenas and Battlegrounds, group members on separate realms may not directly interact with each other at all.

We’d love to get feedback on how this functions as well as any bug reports for anything that feels like it doesn’t work like it should with this system. Thank you for all of your bug reports and feedback so far for patch 3.4.1, and we are really looking forward to seeing you tackle Ulduar, Titan Rune Dungeons, and everything else present in Phase 2 of Wrath Classic when 3.4.1 releases very soon!

---

Will this allow OCE to queue in the NA pool?

This is a very good question. If we do indeed move forward with this change on live US region realms, we will need to re-merge Oceanic and US PvP queues for it to work properly in the US/Oceanic region. I don’t have a lot else to report on this at this moment, as our focus here is to test the baseline functionality of cross-realm PvP groups, but in the months since we split the US and Oceanic battlegroups, this is has been a very, very frequent request, so it’s something we are looking at very closely.

Hopefully we’ll be ready to share more very soon. Thanks for asking!