World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’re currently testing, and intend to deploy hotfixes that will fix bugs and adjust the difficulty of the Anduin encounter in Sepulcher of the First Ones:

Anduin

• Hopebreaker damage over time reduced by 10% in Heroic difficulty.
• Fixed a bug that caused Befouled Barrier to absorb 100% of healing received. Befouled Barrier should absorb 75% of healing in Heroic and Mythic difficulties, and 50% in Normal and Raid Finder difficulties.
• Grim Reflections health reduced by 20% in non-Mythic difficulties.
• Purging Light damage over time reduced by 20% in Heroic difficulty.

When Zul’Gurub opens on March 3 at 3:00 p.m. PST, a new challenge awaits you. Hakkar the Soulflayer will now offer bonus loot.

First, players will now always receive a Primal Hakkari Idol when Hakkar is defeated. In addition to the Idol, extra pieces of gear will drop when Hakkar is defeated, and Priests or Priestesses are still alive:

• When you leave a specific Priest or Priestess alive and defeat Hakkar, then there is a guaranteed chance that a piece of rare or epic loot from that boss will drop from Hakkar.
  
  • Example: If you kill Hakkar and High Priestess Arlokk is still alive, you’ll get a guaranteed piece of Arlokk’s loot from from Hakkar, such as Will of Arlokk or Panther Hide Sack.
  • Example: If you kill Hakkar and both Venoxis and Thekal are still alive, you’ll get two additional pieces of loot, one from each boss, such as Fang of Venoxis and even the Swift Zulian Tiger.

This gives you an additional chance at a specific Priest or Priestess’s loot during your raid lockout. All you’ll need to do is kill Hakkar before killing that specific Priest or Priestess.

Invaders encroach upon holy ground! The Altar of Blood must be protected!

I was at 65% a few minutes ago, and all of a sudden I’m at 38%. Everyone in zone said the same thing. People are wondering what’s happening.
That’s essentially correct. For a brief time earlier today, the quest was incorrectly counting requirements. It was quickly fixed so that it works as intended with the overall change to make it a weekly quest.

Classes

• Druid
  
  • Balance
    
    • Fixed an issue where Celestial Pillar (2-piece Set Effect) would not be activated if triggered too quickly.
      
• Monk
  
  • Mistweaver
    
    • Reverted a change in Eternity’s End to Fallen Order's (Venthyr Ability) Crane Adept’s Enveloping Mist cooldown and cast variance that caused Enveloping Mist to only be cast once per summon.
      
      • Developers’ notes: In 9.1, it was identified that the Crane Adept guardians summoned by the ability Fallen Order would cast an additional Enveloping Mist if players reached a certain amount of Haste. Generally, we try to avoid these “Haste Breakpoints” that introduce big jumps in power with arbitrary amounts of a particular stat. In 9.1.5, we shared that we intended to fix this problem in the player’s favor, by ensuring that the Adept’s always cast Enveloping Mist twice per summon. However, upon further review, we opted to not make this change due to balance concerns. For 9.2, we made a change early in development that caused Fallen Order Adepts to be limited to casting a single Enveloping Mist. We are reverting that change via hotfix so that Fallen Order will have the same functionality as it does in 9.1.5. In the future, we will be looking at Fallen Order’s tuning and might make adjustments, but we do not want to make such a large change to this ability before Season 3 starts.
        
• Shaman
  
  • Restoration
    
    • The bonus damage from the Raging Vesper Vortex (Kyrian Runecarving Power) has been reduced by 35%.
      
• Warlock
  
  • Affliction
    
    • Fixed an issue where Malefic Rapture would consume a Soul Shard despite having Calamitous Crescendo (2-piece Set Effect).
      
• Warrior
  
  • Protection
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 6%.
      

Creatures and NPCs

• The Ancient Translocators for the Sepulcher of the First Ones and Antecedent Isle will now appear on the Zereth Mortis zone map.
  
• Antros' Dark Deterrence no longer persists after completing the encounter.
  
• Mounts are now disabled on top of the quest characters in the center of Haven.
  
• Fixed an issue where the vines to start the Gluttonous Overgrowth encounter would not respawn.
  
• The Engulfer’s health now increases as more players engage it in combat.

Cypher of the First Ones

• The "Sopranian Understanding" Cypher talent is now locked while being researched on an alternate character.

Dungeons and Raids

• Sepulcher of the First Ones
  
  • Volatile Sentries will now correctly detect stealthed and invisible players.
    
  • Vigilant Guardian
    
    • Volatile Materium now activates more quickly after all currently activated Volatile Materium have been defeated.
      
    • Pre-Fabricated Sentries now activates more quickly in an attempt to keep two Pre-Fabricated Sentries active.
      
  • Artificer Xy’mox
    
    • The visual of the Genesis Rings now better matches the effect.
      
    • Reduced the damage of Hyperlight Sparknova by 30% on all difficulties except Mythic.
      
    • Artificer Xy'mox now uses abilities at a slightly less frantic pace while below 30% health.
      
  • Prototype Pantheon
    
    • Fixed an issue where players were unable to loot The Prototype of Absolution upon completion of the encounter.
      
  • Halondrus the Reclaimer
    
    • Reduced the amount of damage absorption provided by Reclaim by 20% on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
      
    • Reduced the amount of damage Reclaim gains periodically to 25% of its initial value on Normal and Heroic difficulties (was 50%).
      
    • Reduced the base speed of Ephemeral Motes by 20% on Heroic difficulty.
      
  • Anduin Wrynn
    
    • The healing absorbed by Anduin's Befouled Barrier has been reduced by 25% on Normal difficulty and reduced by 30% on Heroic difficulty.
      
• Plaguefall
  
  • Fixed an issue that caused Ickor Bileflesh's Ghost Step to spawn Margrave Stradama early.
    
• Mythic+
  
  • Mythic+ Rating colors have updated rating requirements due to the addition of the two Tazavesh dungeons. Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary now require 25% more overall rating than they did before.
    
  • Enemies that are part of a dungeon boss encounter are no longer affected by the Bolstering affix.
    
    • Developers’ note: Bringing additional enemies into a boss fight is a common tactic at higher key levels, and the current interaction of Bolstering with bosses largely prevents players from using that tactic. We've discussed this interaction and feel that it's not necessary to our goals for the affix, so we're making an adjustment with the hope of opening up more strategic choice during Bolstering weeks.
      
  • So'leah's Gambit
    
    • Timecap'n Hooktail
      
      • Fixed an issue where Corsair Brute could trigger affixes.
        

Items and Rewards

• The Dominance Key will no longer drop once you've opened the Domination Cache in the Endless Sands area of Zereth Mortis.
  
• Many Uncommon (green) quality items in Zereth Mortis will now correctly drop as Bind on Equip instead of Bind on Pickup.
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause Bell of the Endless Feast to stack much more quickly than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue which allowed the Cache of Sepulcher Treasures to drop the fist weapon, Domination's Deliverance.
  
  • Developer's note: This week's Timewalking cache is only intended to contain loot from the first 8 Sepulcher of the First Ones encounters. In the future, after all of the raid has been seen by players, it will be updated to include loot from all Sepulcher bosses.
    While it was unintended that this weapon be available to anyone this week, we do not believe that its presence at a Normal Raid power level distorts competitive fairness, so we will not be removing it from characters who received it.
    

Player versus Player

• Brawls
  
  • Fixed an issue that caused Warsong Scramble to show up in the calendar twice in the normal rotation.
    
  • “Something Different” weekly brawl quest is no longer completed when participating in Solo Shuffle.
    

Quests

• The Irresistible Goop quest item now returns to the player when they return to the quest area for “Feed the Annelids.”
  
• The damage done by Generated Shapesmith and Generated Oracle during the quest “Step Into the Ring” has been reduced.

WoW Classic Era and Season of Mastery

• Fixed an issue causing the Outhouse in the "Locked Away" quest to no longer be interactable until a server reset.

At the start of each PvP season, we perform a game wide adjustment to players’ matchmaking ratings to re-normalize their distribution. After this process, most players don’t notice much of a difference with their matchmaking rating, but players at the far ends of the distribution may notice a significant change.

Unfortunately, this process did not occur prior to the start of Season 3 in this region (all of the Americas and Oceanic realms). This re-normalization needs to happen as soon as possible to prevent players’ personal ratings from far exceeding their re-normalized matchmaking ratings, particularly at the high end of the ladder.

We will be performing this re-normalization this evening, and players may notice a change to their matchmaking rating when they log in tomorrow.

As soon as we’ve completed our testing, we intend to make the following adjustments to the Halondrus the Reclaimer encounter in Sepulcher of the First Ones:

• Reduced the amount of damage absorption provided by Reclaim by 20% on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
• Reduced the amount of damage Reclaim gains periodically from 50% of its initial value to 25% of its initial value on Normal and Heroic difficulties.
• Reduced the base speed of Ephemeral Motes by 20% on Heroic difficulty.