World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

For a limited time*, players who do not own Dragonflight but have a subscription or active Game Time can play the new expansion as the dracthyr Evoker beginning today. Experience the Forbidden Reach starting zone for this new race and class combination while leveling in the Dragon Isles up to level 63 in the Waking Shores and through Chapter 1 of the Dragonflight campaign. You’ll be able to experience all the quests, unlock and learn Dragonriding, take your professions to the next level, and even experience two new dungeons during the trial period—Ruby Lifepools and The Nokhud Offensive.

Learn more about Dragonflight on our official page and stay up on the latest on the official World of Warcraft news page.

*Dragonflight Expansion Trial access with Subscription/Game Time only available through January 2, 2023. After this period, Dragonflight purchase is required for continued access to dracthyr Evoker and other Dragonflight content.

It’s the perfect time of year to gift someone a new adventure in the Dragon Isles. For a limited time*, the purchase of any edition of Dragonflight comes with a bonus 30 Days of Game Time— free.

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What You Get

Base Edition

• World of Warcraft® Dragonflight
  
• Play as the Dracthyr Evoker, new race & class
  
• Bonus 30 Days of Game Time (limited-time offer)

Heroic Edition

• World of Warcraft® Dragonflight
  
• Play as the Dracthyr Evoker, new race & class
  
• Dragonflight-Level Character Boost (Level 60)
  
• Tangled Dreamweaver Mount
  
• Murkastrasza Pet
  
• Bonus 30 Days of Game Time (limited-time offer)

Epic Edition

• World of Warcraft® Dragonflight
  
• Play as the Dracthyr Evoker, new race & class
  
• Dragonflight-Level Character Boost (Level 60)
  
• Tangled Dreamweaver Mount
  
• Murkastrasza Pet
  
• Timewalker’s Hearthstone Effect
  
• Diadem of the Spell-Keeper Head-slot Transmog
  
• Wings of Awakening Backslot Transmog in 5 color variants
  
• 30 Days of Game Time + a bonus 30 additional Days of Game Time (60 days total for the duration of the extra Game Time offer)

Whether you’re gifting Dragonflight to a friend or purchasing it for yourself, you won’t want to delay!

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*Game time offer available through January 2, 2023. Offer not available when upgrading Dragonflight editions. Gifted copies of Dragonflight must be claimed by the recipient by January 2, 2023, to receive the additional 30 days of Game Time.

Achievements

• For Honor Our Ancestors, Jhakan Khan's requested item has been changed from Primal Molten Greatbelt to Fire-Blessed Greatsword.

Classes

• Mage
  
  • Arcane
    
    • Fixed an issue with Nether Tempest not always applying to your currently selected target.
      
• Rogue
  
  • Fixed an issue that prevented Thistle Tea charges from refreshing after encounters.
    

Dragonriding

• Cliffside Wylderdrake
  
  • Green Scales manuscript will now correctly unlock green scales.
    
  • Blue Scales manuscript will now correctly unlock blue scales.
    

Dungeons and Raids

• Vault of the Incarnates
  
  • Eranog
    
    • Resolved an issue causing Incinerate to sometimes hit players if Eranog was defeated during intermission.
      

Mythic+

• Affixes
  
  • Thundering
    
    • Mark of Lightning and Mark of Wind no longer display an overhead visual once only one marked player remains.
      
    • The visual warning when Mark of Lightning and Mark of Wind near expiration has been increased in size.
      
• Halls of Valor
  
  • Hyrja
    
    • Fixed an issue that caused Hyrja’s and Olmyr’s Sanctify ability to inflict more damage than intended.
      
• Temple of the Jade Serpent
  
  • Wise Mari
    
    • Fixed an issue that could cause Wise Mari's facing to change during Wash Away.
      
• Vault of the Incarnates
  
  • The number of Dormant Infusers increased to 5 on Mythic difficulty (was 4).
    
  • Dathea, Ascended's health reduced by 15% on Mythic difficulty.
    

Pet Battles

• The Gray Marmoni and Black Skitterbug battle pets are now bind-on-pickup.

Player versus Player

• Characters
  
  • Pandaren
    
    • Pre-Mixed Pot of Noodles will now scale up to level 70, granting an appropriate amount of Versatility for Pandaren in PvP.
      

Professions

• Griftah has taken note of all the wonderous and amazing items that the adventurers of Azeroth have been crafting and has decided to branch out his business to include a new Optional Reagent: Griftah's All-Purpose Embellishing Powder. Griftah's All-Purpose Embellishing Powder is guaranteed to give your gear +1 Sparkle when applied through crafting or recrafting! This will remove any embellishments you have added to that gear, as well as the Unique-Equipped: Embellished (2) requirement on it.
  
• Alchemy
  
  • Fixed several issues that caused Phial durations to scale unpredictably when consuming multiple. Phial duration specialization perks should now also function correctly as part of this fix.
    
  • Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage will now correctly restore Corrupting Rage if you die while Overwhelming Rage is active.
    
• Jewelcrafting
  
  • Fixed a scaling issue that caused Idol of the Aspects trinkets to be far weaker than intended.
    
  • Idol of the Aspects trinkets now stack up to 18 times before transforming (was 15).
    

Reputation

• Dragonscale Expedition
  
  • The Small Expedition Shovel is now bind-on-pickup.
    
  • Fixed an issue where some of the early Dragonscale Expedition cosmetics were set to Bind on Account instead of Bind on Pickup. Players can purchase items on alts to unlock them once at least one character has reached the correct Renown Rank.
    
• Maruuk Centaur
  
  • Essence of Awakening is now properly bind-on-pickup.
    

Wrath of the Lich King Classic

• Fixed an issue where holidays on the calendar could be off by one day.
  
• Classes
  
  • Death Knight
    
    • Frost
      
      • Fixed an issue where it was possible to have multiple ranks of Icy Talons active at once.
        
    • Unholy
      
      • Fixed an issue where multiple ranks of Desolation can be stacked at once.

Greetings,

We’re excited to see Rated Solo Shuffle underway in Dragonflight Season 1 and are happy to see interest in the feature. In October, we posted an FAQ about Rated Solo Shuffle and we want to provide another update following the abundance of feedback and data we’ve received.

Title Rewards

As indicated in the first FAQ, we recognized the feedback around the end of season title for the top 0.1% of each specialization in Solo Shuffle, Crimson Soloist, to be an underwhelming choice of title. We discussed alternative titles and landed on one we think better encapsulates the prestige of the achievement: Crimson Legend. Going forward we plan to use the Season name as the prefix.

Additionally, Solo Shuffle is missing a goal for high end players who are not necessarily in contention for ending the season in the top 0.1%. Similar to how the Gladiator title works in 3v3, we will add a new seasonal title with a corresponding achievement in Rated Solo Shuffle: Legend. You’ll earn this title by winning 100 rounds of Solo Shuffle above 2400 personal rating. This title will then be available to use for the remainder of the season and will be reset at the beginning of each season.

These updates are coming to the game next week. Unfortunately, due to a technical limitation, the tracking for rounds won for Legend will not be retroactive.

Future Improvements

We also want to provide an update on some additional features and improvements we’re actively working on implementing. These will come to the game with future updates:

• Rating calculated per round in games with leavers.
• Deserter debuff being tracked account-wide.
• UI improvements
• Matchmaking Value for each player in a match will be displayed on the scoreboard.
• Adding a warning prompt that displays the penalty for leaving if a player attempts to leave a match.
• Mouseover on the queue time for a match will display the Average DPS wait time as well as the Average Healer wait time.
• Indicator on the UI for Call to Arms for Healer, displaying extra rewards that healers receive for queuing.

Finally, we recognize that queue times for damage dealers can be extraordinarily long due to having a low ratio of available healers to DPS in the queue; there are nearly 4 DPS for every healer during the most active queue times. We’re actively discussing the best options to incentivize more healers to queue for Solo Shuffle and we’ll share more about that as we develop ways to address it.

Thank you very much for all of your feedback!

Now that Season 1 is underway, we’re planning the following tuning adjustments to classes, to take place during scheduled weekly maintenance on December 20.

Classes

Druid

• Restoration
  
  • All healing increased by 5%. This change does not apply to PvP combat.
  • Embrace of the Dream healing increased by 25%.
  • Luxuriant Soil now has a 1.5/3% (was 1/2%) chance to spread Rejuvenation.
    
    • The tooltip will not reflect this change, but it will be corrected in a future update.

Death Knight

• Soul Reaper damage increased by 10%.
• Icy Talons duration increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds).
• Unholy
  
  • Apocalypse ghoul duration increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds).
  • Death Coil damage increased by 10%.
  • Clawing Shadows damage increased by 6%.
  • Scourge Strike damage increased by 6%.
  • Plaguebringer duration increased to 10 seconds (was 5 seconds).
  • Reaping now increases the damage of Soul Reaper, Scourge Strike, Festering Strike, and Death Coil by 25% damage to enemies below 35% health (was 20% increased damage).

Evoker

• Disintegrate damage increased by 15%.

Hunter

• Marksmanship
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.

Mage

• Fire
  
  • Pyroblast damage increased by 12%.
  • Ignite damage increased by 5%.
  • Fire Blast damage increased by 12%.
  • Fireball damage increased by 12%.
  • Scorch damage increased by 12%.
• Frost
  
  • Ice Lance damage increased by 12%.
  • Flurry damage increased by 15%.
  • Frostbolt damage increased by 15%.
  • Glacial Spike damage increased 15%.
  • Splitting Ice now causes Icicles and Ice Lance to hit another nearby target for 80% (was 65%).
    
    • The tooltip will not reflect this change, but it will be corrected in a future update.

Monk

• Windwalker
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.

Priest

• Shadow
  
  • Increased the mana cost of Power Word: Shield to 5% of base Mana (was 4%).
  • Vampiric Touch damage increased by 10%.
  • Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 10% for Shadow only.
  • Shadowy Apparition Damage increased by 10%.
  • Devouring Plague damage increased by 10%.
  • Void Bolt damage increased by 20%.
  • Mind Blast damage increased by 20% for Shadow only.
  • Mind Spike damage increased by 20%.
  • Mind Flay damage increased by 20%.
  • Idol of Y’shaarj increases damage done by 5% when Mindbender is summoned on a feared target (was 15%).

Rogue

• Resounding Clarity now causes Echoing Reprimand to Animacharge 2 additional combo points (was 3).
• Assassination
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.
  • Fatal Concoction’s damage bonus for weapon poisons reduced to 10% (was 15%).
• Outlaw
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.
• Subtlety
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.

Shaman

• Enhancement
  
  • All ability damage reduced by 3%.

Warlock

• Affliction
  
  • Malefic Rapture damage increased 15%.
  • Drain Soul damage increased 20%.
  • Shadow Bolt damage increased 20%.
  • Pandemic Invocation damage increased 500%.
• Destruction
  
  • Chaos Bolt damage increased by 5%.

Warrior

• Arms
  
  • All ability damage increased by 3%.
  • Mortal Strike damage increased by 5%.
  • Execute damage increased by 10%.
• Fury
  
  • (2) Set Bonus: Execute critical hit chance bonus increased to 25% (was 10%).

Player versus Player

Based on data we’ve observed so far in Season 1, we’re making some PvP-specific adjustments. One of the broader changes we’re making is to target mana regeneration for different healers to better balance their longevity in relationship to throughput in PvP.

Druid

• Restoration
  
  • Lifebloom healing reduced by 10% in PvP combat.
  • Lifebloom (Bloom) healing reduced by 10% in PvP combat.
• Developers’ note: Lifebloom continued to constitute a significant portion of a Restoration Druid’s healing in PvP, so we’re lowering it. We feel that Restoration Druid’s throughput with this adjustment will remain strong.
• Balance
  
  • Starsurge damage increased by 20% in PvP.
  • Wrath damage increased by 20% in PvP.
  • Starfire damage increased by 20% in PvP.
• Developers’ note: Balance Druid’s potential burst has gone down significantly, while at the same time their consistent spread damage has increased. Overall this is a healthier place, but we want Starsurge to also be a viable option for spending Astral Power in PvP. Additionally, we’d like to reward Balance Druids for casting Wrath and Starfire since those are more difficult to cast in PvP.
• Feral
  
  • Leader of the Pack now heals for 3% of maximum health (was 5%).
• Developers’ note: As a follow up to one of our goals in last week’s tuning of DPS specializations having higher self-healing than we were comfortable with, we are making an adjustment with Leader of the Pack to be more in line with other DPS specializations’ self healing.

Paladin

• Holy
  
  • Mana regeneration now reduced by 35% (was 40%) in PvP combat.

Priest

• Discipline
  
  • Mana regeneration now reduced by 5% (was 15%) in PvP combat.
• Shadow
  
  • Reduced the duration of Void Volley: Horrify to 2 seconds (was 3 seconds).
  • Reduced the damage of Void Volley by 30%.
  • Reduced the absorption value of Power Word: Shield by 20% in PvP Combat for Shadow only.
  • Reduced the healing transfer of Vampiric Embrace by 20% in PvP Combat.
  • Shadow Word: Death damage reduced by 20% in PvP Combat for Shadow only
• Developers’ note: Shadow Priest self-sustain is too high in PvP so we are making targeted adjustments to their healing. Additionally, we are targeting Void Volley and Idol of Y’Shaarj as we’ve seen it could lead to frustrating situations with minimal counterplay when paired with other instant cast damage dealing abilities.

Monk

• Blackout Kick damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
• Tiger Palm damage increased by 15% in PvP combat.
• Mistweaver
  
  • Mana regeneration now reduced by 15% (was 5%) in PvP combat.
• Windwalker
  
  • Strike of the Windlord damage reduced by 30% in PvP combat.
• Developers’ note: Strike of the Windlord and Thunderfist are dealing more burst than we are comfortable with so we are adjusting them and increasing additional sustained damage.

Rogue

• Numbing Poison’s attack and cast speed debuff effectiveness reduced by 33% in PvP combat.
• Assassination
  
  • Deathmark’s damage dealt by duplicated poisons and bleeds reduced by 30% in PvP combat.
    
    • The tooltip will not reflect this change, but it will be corrected in a future update.
• Subtlety
  
  • Secret Technique damage reduced by 30% in PvP combat.
• Developers’ note: Assassination bleed damage is higher than we are comfortable with and Secret Technique has potential to lead to burst windows with minimal counterplay, so we are toning them down. Additionally, we are most comfortable with baseline cast speed reduction being 10% in PvP currently, so we’re reducing Numbing Poison to be in line with similar abilities.

Shaman

• Healing Stream Totem healing increased by 15% in PvP combat.
• Enhancement
  
  • Reduced the damage of Elemental Blast by 15% in PvP combat.
  • Primordial Wave causes your next Lightning Bolt to hit all targets with Flame Shock for 75% of normal damage for Enhancement only in PvP Combat (was 150%).
• Restoration
  
  • Riptide healing increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
• Elemental
  
  • Reduced the damage of Elemental Blast by 15% in PvP combat.
• Developers’ note: We’ve continued to see Elemental Blast be too bursty in PvP, for both Enhancement and Elemental. Additionally, Lightning Bolt burst with Primordial Wave for Enhancement was dealing more burst than desired, so we’re bringing down the value of Primordial Wave so that Lightning Bolt on its own can continue to shine. For Restoration, we’re targeting buffs to instant cast spells for improved survivability.

Warlock

• Demonic Embrace no longer gains 10% additional stamina in PvP.
• Developers’ note: Warlocks continued to be more survivable than we’d like so we are making further targeted adjustments.
• Affliction
  
  • Soulburn Port duration reduced to 6 seconds in PvP.
  • Soulburn Drain Life no longer grants an absorb when healing at full health in PvP.
  • Soulburn Healthstone healing is reduced to 20% (was 30%) in PvP combat.
• Demonology
  
  • The cooldown of Call Felhunter is now 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Developers’ note: Demonology Warlocks have an abundance of control in their toolkit that can be used frequently so we are targeting the cooldown of Call Felhunter.
• Destruction
  
  • Chaos Bolt damage increased by 15% in PvP Combat.
  • Shadowburn damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat.
  • Incinerate damage increased by 30% in PvP Combat.
• Developers’ note: Destruction Warlocks traditionally shine in PvP through setting up big burst windows, and we feel like they have been lacking in that regard.

Warrior

• Fury
  
  • Warpaint now reduces damage taken by 5% (was 10%) while enraged in PvP combat.
• Developers’ note: We feel that Fury Warriors are too durable, even after last week’s adjustments to their self-healing from Bloodthirst.
• Protection
  
  • Shield Slam damage reduced by 20% in PvP combat.
  • Rend damage reduced by 20% in PvP combat (Protection Warrior only).
• Developers’ note: Protection Warriors are continuing to deal more damage than we would like even after recent adjustments. In some cases, we’ve observed them competing with damage-dealing specializations, so we’re making additional targeted adjustments on Shield Slam and Rend.