World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

The change to Binding Shot’s root to break from damage is intentional, and there’s some history with this ability. As many probably remember, it was briefly changed to break from damage in Shadowlands, but that change was reverted.

The launch of an expansion is a good time to change things where necessary, as it’s almost a reboot for many parts of the game. Binding Shot is intended to root targets who move too far away from the center point. Root effects from players in the game such as Druid’s Entangling Roots or Mass Entanglement, or Mage’s Frost Nova, traditionally break after taking some amount of damage. Roots that don’t break from damage are inconsistent, and consistency is important for understanding rules within the game. Binding Shot was an unintended exception to this rule, the root effect not breaking from damage was never intended to be part of its identity.

This does reduce the potential power of Binding Shot, yes. With the amount of change coming in Dragonflight, and options for new control abilities such as Scatter Shot or Hi-Explosive Trap being available, we feel this is an appropriate time to make this change.

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Going to make a quick post addressing Binding Shot before making a follow-up post.

We still feel like a root that doesn’t break from damage is not a good thing to have in the game, because it’s not at all clear why it works differently than other roots. That said, Binding Shot is a powerful tool Hunters have to manage some situations where you want to both do high damage to a group of enemy targets, as well as have control over their ability to chase you.

We’re changing Binding Shot from a root that breaks on damage to a 3 second stun.

There are some other minor Hunter changes we wanted to discuss, but wanted to address Binding Shot specifically.

There’s some other minor Hunter changes coming in a future build, and we also wanted to talk about the new Lesser Dragonkin pet family.

Class Tree:

• Improved Traps and Rejuvenating Wind should actually have their places swapped. Really this time.
• Concussive Shot will now replace Wing Clip, and no longer requires a ranged weapon.
• Wing Clip Focus cost reduced by 10. This was a rank 2 upgrade that was incorrectly not baked into Wing Clip.
• Fortitude of the Bear should have all of its interactions properly setup now with Command Pet, tenacity pets, as well as Lone Wolf Marksmanship Hunters.
  
  • The Kindred Beasts PvP talent has also been updated to work with Fortitude of the Bear.

Lesser Dragonkin
As some of you may have noticed, there’s a new pet family you can tame creatures from, the Lesser Dragonkin.

• Lesser Dragonkin are a Ferocity pet.
• Lesser Dragonkin have a new pet family ability, Shimmering Scales. This reduces your pet’s magic damage taken by 70% for 8 seconds, on a 90 second cooldown.
• Cloud Serpents have had their pet family changed from Serpents to Lesser Dragonkin, but the ability to tame Cloud Serpents has not been changed in any way.
• Lesser Dragonkin taming is currently planned to be a reward from the Valdrakken faction.
• Lesser Dragonkin includes creatures like the new Hornswogs from Dragonflight, or the Feathered Drakes in Ardenweald, or even some of the Faerie Dragons in places like Feralas.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Enhancement Shaman,

Some minor changes coming in your next build:

• Feral Lunge has moved to a spot below Windfury Weapon.
• Windfury Totem is once again 20%.
• Swirling Maelstrom has been lowered from 2 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon, down to 1, however the tooltip has been clarified now grants 1 stack of Maelstrom Weapon per Fire Nova eruption.
• Crash Lightning has had some significant adjustments:
  
  • Crash Lightning cooldown increased from 9 to 12 seconds.
  • Crash Lightning’s buff from hitting 2 or more targets has increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
  • Ice Strike can now also cause the bonus damage from Crash Lightning.
  • The initial damage, as well as the bonus damage from Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Ice Strike has been increased.
  • The initial damage as well as the bonus damage from Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Ice Strike now deals reduced damage when you are fighting more than 6 targets.

Characters

• Fixed an issue where the Dark Ranger customization options for Blood Elf, Night Elf, and Void Elf were missing.

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

• Whirlwind animations, such as the Warrior's Whirlwind and a Rogue's Fan of Knives, will now appear while moving (was only while standing still).
  
• Druid
  
  • Track Humanoids will no longer activate when shapeshifting into Cat Form if Find Minerals, Find Fish, or Find Herbs is already active.
    
• Rogue
  
  • Fixed an issue where Overkill would be applied and immediately removed on rogues who did not know that talent.
    
• True to their vocation, Argent Outfitters will now exchange Necrotic Runes for armor and other items in Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, and Silvermoon City. They will make their way to the Undercity once enough Scourge have been defeated across Azeroth.
  
• During the quest "City of Light," Khadgar's Servant will now continue giving its tour even if the player is not nearby.
  
• Zombies are no longer unstoppable by benefitting from Preparation at the start of battlegrounds. Alterac Valley weekend is saved!
  
• Gathering nodes will now have a sparkling visual effect when being tracked.
  
• Fixed an issue where Group Finder activity level ranges were not correct. They should now more closely match the levels of the Meeting Stones for those dungeons.
  
• Players can now list and browse the Group Finder for dungeons that are below their level.
  
• Latency and other performance information is now visible in the tooltip of the Game Menu button.
  
• Players can now report character friends.

How do you do fellow Demon Hunters,

We wanted to tip you off to some changes that will be present in an upcoming build, as we’ve seen discussion around these topics, and want to provide additional context for continued discussion since it helps guide future iteration.

First up is the feedback we’ve heard surrounding Vengeance’s Mastery: Fel Blood, which increases the armor granted by Demon Spikes. While there are (very intentionally) talent options available that can increase Demon Spikes uptime and therefore influence the relative value of Mastery for a character, two problems remain:

• The starting value of the Mastery stat is drastically lower than other secondary stats
• Mastery has no value while Demon Spikes is not active, further reducing incentive to invest in it as it does not help survive the moments of greatest weakness, as where other stats would

As a result, we’ve decided to softly rework Vengeance’s Mastery



What does this mean? While Demon Spikes is active, Mastery: Fel Blood will provide the same bonus per Mastery as it did previously, but now with 50% of that value persisting while Demon Spikes is not active.

As always, we welcome discussion about this upcoming change, and will be on the lookout for that as well as gameplay feedback when the updated Mastery makes its way into player hands on the PTR and Beta.

Now, on to the topic of Metamorphosis, talents that affect it on the Demon Hunter class tree, and some spec-specific changes related to it all. Here are the most relevant notes:

• Metamorphosis base CD standardized at 4 min
• Rush of Chaos still reduces CD by 60 sec, to 3 min for both specs
• Havoc’s Metamorphosis duration reduced to 25 sec
• Demonic Origins now reduces CD by 60 sec (reaching 2 min CD for both specs), no longer reduces duration, and now causes Metamorphosis to grant 10% Versatility while active

We hope the above will result in the cooldowns and talent options available for Metamorphosis making a little more sense as to what circumstances players might consider picking them, regardless of what spec perspective it’s being viewed from.

Moving on to Havoc, there are two topics to discuss. First, the talent Fel Bombardment (which was previously not yet implemented) has been removed from the tree. While many former Legendary or conduit effects have been able to transition to forms you’ve seen as Dragonflight talents for many classes, we have decided we do not want the particulars of Fel Bombardment’s gameplay cemented as a more permanent talent and will be leaving it in the Shadowlands. Mo’arg Bionics will be moving into its place, with a new Throw Glaive-related talent appearing near the top of the tree:



Finally, as a brief follow-up to a previous topic, Demon’s Bite/Demon Blades will be returning as skills that can apply Burning Wound, alongside the previously-added Throw Glaive. Thank you to those who played the updated version and shared feedback about your experiences.

Cheers.

Hello Death Knights,

We want to share some of the upcoming changes we have planned for the Frost spec tree in the next Beta build. While we were generally happy with the Frost tree and what it had to offer, we also recognize that there were some improvements that could be made based on our learnings over Dragonflight’s Alpha development.

The existing Frost tree suffered a bit from a lack of choice once a player locked into a specific build (often choosing between Obliteration or BoS, then making 1 or 2 choices with what talent points remained). To help alleviate this issue, the upcoming tree has received new talents, reworked talents, existing talents moved to more accessible spaces, updated pathing connections, and lastly several selection node talents have been decoupled and moved elsewhere within the tree (most notably Icecap).

This is what it looks like:



Below, you can find the new and updated talents. This doesn’t cover all of the positional and pathing changes for talents, but it does highlight some of the more notable ones.

Unleashed Frenzy

• Now grants the strength buff when any Runic Power ability damages an enemiy

Improved Frost Strike and Runic Command

• Swapped positions on the tree

Glacial Advance

• Removed the cooldown
• Moved higher into the tree and is now unlocked after the 1st gate.

Frostscythe

• Moved higher into the tree and is now unlocked after the 1st gate.

Horn of Winter

• Now Frost only and placed directly after Improved Obliterate

Improved Killing Machine

• Renamed to Frostreaper

Enduring Strength

• Now available directly after Pillar of Frost
• New Icon

Frostwhelp’s Aid

• Now available directly after Pillar of Frost

Coldheart

• No longer a choice node with Inexorable Assault
• Moved to the right side of the tree below Improved Rime

Inexorable Assault

• No longer a choice node with Cold Heart
• Moved below Frostreaper on the left side of the tree

Icecap

• No longer a choice node with Obliteration
• Now available directly after Frostwhelp’s Aid or Enduring Strength

Empower Rune Weapon

• Now properly grants +1 charge if you already know the spell from the core tree

Everfrost

• Now directly available after Gathering Storm and should no longer be able to be taken without knowing Remorseless Winter
• Reduced to a 1 max rank, down from 2.

New Talent – Shattering Strike

• When Frost Strike damages an enemy with 5 stacks of Razorice it will consume them to deal an additional 60% damage.
• Available directly after Icecap

Avalanche

• This has been updated to also apply Razorice to your targets if Howling Blast is empowered by Rime.
• No longer a choice node with Frozen Pulse
• Now available directly after Icecap

Frozen Pulse

• Cut
• Developers’ notes: After reworking the tree and making room for the new talents we felt like Frozen Pulse didn’t offer anything unique to the Frost and rather than forcing it within the tree we decided it best to cut it for now to make room for what we hope are more interesting options.

New Talent - Icebreaker

• When empowered by Rime, Howling Blast deals 30/60% increased damage to your primary target.
• Available directly after Empowered Rune Weapon and Gathering Storm