World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’re making a number of changes to address issues players have been reporting with scaling and improve the overall Remix experience by improving the viability of all content for earning additional experience, bronze, and gear. The following updates have already been made to all realms via hotfix:

• Enemy power scaling, particularly in group content, has been adjusted to be less aggressive. This is particularly applicable in the player level 40 - 70 range, before players have been able to power up their cloak, upgrade their gems, and increase their item level.
• Gear drop rates have been improved from world rares, rare elites, and quests. This will help players who have had their item levels fall behind as leveling speed increases, especially at higher levels when cloak bonus experience is powered up.
  
  • This will also increase player Bronze and appearance acquisition by increasing the number of items to place into the Unraveling Sands for additional Bronze.
• The first time bonus for queueing each LFR wing will grant a Thread of Experience in addition to the existing Lesser Bronze Cache.
  
  • This should improve LFR as a viable choice for leveling main characters and alts, without players feeling like they need to grind the same LFR wing repeatedly.
• We have added bonus experience to each boss in normal dungeons and scenarios so they are a viable alternative to questing. Bonus experience has also been adding to the last boss of Heroic Scenarios. Heroic dungeon bosses will continue to drop bonus experience.
• We’ve increased the number of prismatic gems dropped from bosses in normal and heroic scenarios and dungeons.
  
  • The increased stamina offered by Legendary Prismatic gems boosts player survivability considerably.
• We have increased the Bronze granted from all qualities of Bronze Caches by 25%.
  
  • These caches are available from a wide variety of sources, both solo and group. This includes the Minor Bronze Cache, Lesser Bronze Cache, Bronze Cache, and Greater Bronze Cache.

There are more hotfixes on the way, and as always, we’ll detail all of them in our next hotfixes update.

Since leaving the realms of Death, Anduin Wrynn has only sought to keep his hands busy. Plagued by night terrors and grisly flashbacks, the young king finally finds the isolation he seeks in Stormsong Valley, milling flour for a local village. But while Anduin may be able to hide his identity, he cannot escape who he is or the stuff he is made from.

Wind caressed the newcomer’s bearded face as he permitted his eyes, so hungry for green openness and soft lands, to feast.

Stormsong Valley was the ancient home of the tidesages, mages whose mastery of water and wind had protected ships and sailors for generations. Yet the beauty of this little hamlet near the sparkling sea was not that of majestic monuments to powerful magic. Here, it was obvious one was in the breadbox of Kul Tiras, where a salt-spray wind whispered over barley and wheat and the only magic was that of water and windmills, creaking from morn till night, transmuting elements to energy in service of the feeding and care of ordinary folk.

The pleasant sound of the mills sang a promise of new beginnings.

And the crash of the waves below, near the cave where his belongings lay bundled and buried, spoke of an ending.

Anduin Wrynn’s recent wandering had not taken him to peaceful places. He understood that he was trying to scour himself, to purge his mind and soul, to burn away his sins in places where the landscape reflected his own suffering.

My friends . . . the ones I almost killed. They believe my hands are clean. But they don’t feel clean.

Years after that confession, they still didn’t.

---

Read and download this short story by Christie Golden.

The Cataclysm Classic pre-patch is coming to an end with the launch of Cataclysm Classic on Monday, May 20 at 3:00 p.m. PDT, and we’d like to share some notes on aspects of the expansion that players will want to know.

World Bosses

Poseidus, Mobus, Garr, Xariona, Akma’hat, and Julak-Doom will first begin spawning with the weekly reset the week of June 4. They’ll begin to appear alongside the Baradin Hold raid and its first boss, Argaloth.

Except Poseidus, who drops a mount, world bosses will drop item-level 346 pieces of unique gear alongside a recipe and a random iLvl 359 bind-on-equip epic. These bosses will eventually drop their item-level 359 unique gear when Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman unlock.

Chaos Orbs

In the Cataclysm Classic Beta, Chaos Orbs were Bind on Equip. They will be Bind on Pickup in Cataclysm Classic, just as they were in original Cataclysm.

Heroic Raids

In original Cataclysm, access to attempt Heroic Raids required first completing them on Normal difficulty. This is not the case in Cataclysm Classic – you can go straight into Heroic raiding.

PvP Availability and Rewards

In Cataclysm Classic PvP, the weekly caps for Valor and the seasonal cap for Conquest have been increased by roughly 60%. The rewards granted for certain activities have been adjusted:

• The weekly cap for Valor is now 1600.
• The initial cap for Conquest Points is now 4000 and increases by 4000 every week throughout the season.
• The Random Cataclysm Heroic reward is 240 Valor Points.

Please note: Valor will not be earnable between the launch of Cataclysm and the first weekly reset in each region. Conquest will become available starting with the second weekly reset on May 28, with the launch of the first Cataclysm PvP season.

In Cataclysm Classic, 2v2 and 5v5 will no longer be eligible brackets for earning Gladiator titles or rewards. In the 2v2 and 5v5 brackets, you will be able to earn non-Gladiator titles and Conquest.

PvP Item Transmogs

Rather than utilize the Replica PvP Vendors that were originally added in patch 4.3.0, we’re changing all of the original WoW Classic (Era) PvP gear to be usable as transmog appearances.

All of these pieces of armor have been and will continue to be available from the Legacy Armor and Legacy Weapon Quartermasters in both the Champion’s Hall in Stormwind and the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar.