World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’ve seen feedback like this, expressing interest in the ability to bring consumable items into unrated PvP environments to spice up the flow of combat. Over the years, we put tight restrictions on these to minimize disruption. We felt this was especially important during a time when the solo battleground player did not have alternative forms of content if the chaotic and sandboxy nature of unrated battlegrounds became too overwhelming.

Now, with a variety of game modes to pick from and a much narrower gap in power disparity between players, we want to take an opportunity to review this philosophy. In a hotfix going out tomorrow with the start of Season 3, we will adjust a variety of Dragonflight consumables to enable their use in Unrated Battlegrounds. We will also make a handful of adjustments to War Mode consumables to make them more practical for players to acquire in bulk. Some items will also receive some moderate tuning adjustments (outlined below) to ensure that they are impactful, but not disruptive. The most significant change to note is that the War Mode items in the below list have had their cooldowns standardized to 5 minutes, shared with other typical combat consumables. Engineering bombs remain on their own separate 5 minute cooldown.

With this hotfix, all of the following items will be enabled for unrated battlegrounds and battleground brawls, excluding Battleground Blitz. Please note that some tooltips may include zone restrictions that are no longer applicable after this change and will be corrected in a future patch.

Engineering Bombs
The chance for bomb malfunctions is now standardized to 5% for all players while in a battleground, regardless of other factors.

• Grease Grenade
• Primal Deconstruction Charge
• Polarity Bomb
• Gravitational Displacer
• Sticky Warp Grenade
• and their EZ-Thro counterparts

War Mode Consumables

• Curious Primordial Fungus
• Pest Fogger
• Wild Dragon Fruit
• Wild Truffle
  
  • Duration reduced to 12 seconds (was 20 seconds).
• Energized Temporal Spores
• Gritty Stone Potion
  
  • Speed penalty reduced to 15% (was 30%).
• Warbanner of Ire
  
  • Now on the Battle Standard cooldown of 10 minutes.
  • Bonus primary stat reduced to 5% (was 10%).
• Prismatic Snail Mucus
  
  • Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 30% (was 50%).
• Soothing Emerald Tea
  
  • Now on the Healing Potion cooldown of 5 minutes.
  • Immediate health increased to 25% (was 20%). Health over time increased to 40% (was 15%).
• Volatile Crimson Embers
  
  • Damage bonus increased to 30% (was 25%).
  • Damage taken over time reduced to 1% every 3 seconds (was 3% every 3 seconds).
  • Duration increased to 24 seconds (was 15 seconds).

Additionally, we will adjust the War Mode consumables to no longer be Unique and no longer have charges. Instead, these will be stackable items all the way up to 200. We will also reduce their cost from 100 Bloody Tokens down to 50 for a stack of 5, and Seltherex will now also offer these items for 500 Honor for a stack of 5.

For players who may already have a few of these items when this conversion takes place, you should retain the same remaining number of uses left even if your stack size does not visually reflect this.

Finally, we’d like to encourage everyone to share feedback on all of this. We’ll be monitoring it closely when making further decisions about how to approach this sort of gameplay.

Each week we’ll look ahead to what’s in store for World of Warcraft, share the latest news, and keep you in the know byte by byte. Dragonflight Season 3 begins this week along with the opening of Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope raid dungeon and the race to World First!

---

News and Events This Week

• November 13
  
  • (Article) The WoW Variety Show is back and making its debut in WoW Classic!
    
• November 14
  
  • (Event) Dragonflight Season 3 Begins
    
  • (Event) Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope Raid Dungeon Live!
    
  • (Event) The Raid to World’s First in Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope Begins
    
  • (Event) Twitch Drop: Get the White Riding Camel
    
  • (Event) PvP Brawl: Arathi Blizzard
    
  • (Event) Battleground Bonus Event
    
• November 16
  
  • (Event) World of Warcraft’s 19^th Anniversary Celebration Begins
    
  • (Article) In Development
    
• November 17
  
  • (Article) Blues News
    
• November 19
  
  • (Event) Pilgrim’s Bounty Holiday Begins
    
    • WoW: November 19- 26
      
    • Wrath Classic: November 21-28
      

Season of Discovery is arriving in World of Warcraft, and with it, the latest episode of the WoW Variety Show featuring new challenges across the Season and Hardcore Classic! New activities, new faces, and new prizes, mark your calendar to tune in on Youtube and Twitch on December 9.

Episode 3 of the WoW Variety Show is coming soon to WoW Classic! We’ll be delving into the ominous realm of Classic Hardcore and showcasing the first new Raid from Season of Discovery. This one-day excursion will be jam-packed with plenty of action, adventure, and surprises for our contestants and audience alike, including some new realm-wide buffs on the Variety Show event server. Participation in this episode’s activities have been expanded to include players from all over the world, with open sign ups for the first activity!

Think you can take the heat? Join the WoW Variety Show Discord and apply today to go again!

---

---

Variety Show: You Only Live Once

The WoW Classic Variety Show will have three activities featuring our friendly competitors, with some special surprises in store that’ll bring even more fun to the show!

Race to Defeat Hogger

We start out in Hardcore Classic on a fresh server for the event. You’ll create a level 1 character, and race to level up to a point where you can take down the coveted Riverpaw gnoll chieftain. The first player to defeat Hogger while not in a party will be deemed the winner. But it wouldn’t be the Variety Show without the return of our trusty Wheel of Warcraft, so we’re proud to announce our gnomish engineers have been hard at work adding some new unique in-game attributes to help (or hinder) players along the way, more info to come. The event is open registration, and anyone can compete alongside some celebrity contestants whom will be announced closer to the event.

Season of Discovery: Blackfathom Deeps Race

Season of Discovery goes live on November 30, and with Variety Show 9 days later this will be an early opportunity for players to race through the newly updated level 25 raid in Blackfathom Deeps. Gather your runes, and prepare to take down Aku’mai ahead of the competition! Four teams will be invited to compete, with sign-ups open now. Spots for this activity are limited, so register today!

Mak’gora Madness

Finally, you remember those characters from the Race to Defeat Hogger? Well while some players go off to fight Aku’mai in Blackfathom Deeps, other players are invited to keep levelling those fresh characters ahead of the ultimate challenge: Mak’gora Madness. Mak’gora Madness will feature one single-elimination bracket filled with duels to the death, culminating in 1 survivor. The 28 players who achieve the highest level before the start of this activity will be entered into the final bracket alongside 4 celebrity contestants. In Mak’gora, anything goes, and to the final winner go all the spoils.

Of course, we couldn’t end it there. We’ve got some special surprises in store for the show beyond these three activities, so stay tuned for more information on this episode’s additional activities!

---

FAQ

Who can compete?

This episode will have activities open to players from around the world! Full eligibility and rules can be found here.

How many spots are open?

While our activities are bigger than ever this time around, spots are still limited to allow us to ensure the best experience for everyone!

The Race to Defeat Hogger will be capped at a maximum of 400 players, and this will be determined on a first come first serve basis. The highest leveled players will be invited to Mak’gora Madness at the beginning of that activity.

For the Season of Discovery Blackfathom Deeps Race, each WoW Celebrity Contestant will race alongside 9 WoW Community Contestants for a total of 36 spots.

When does registration close?

We’ll be accepting applications until 10:00am (PT) on Friday, November 24, 2023.

When will invitations be extended?

All invitations to the show will be extended by 5:00pm on Monday, November 27, 2023.

Who are the WoW Celebrity Contestants?

The WoW Celebrity Contestants will be revealed in the coming weeks! Make sure to follow us on Twitter to catch who will be joining the broadcast.

What are the prizes?

A variety of in-game goodies & physical swag will be available to participants and audience members throughout the broadcast.

What are the surprises?

A surprise is defined as something unexpected or astonishing. As such, we’ll be doing our part to keep our surprises hidden and unexpected!

Achievements

• Treasures of the Emerald Dream again rewards the Forest Lord’s Antlers.
  
  • Developers’ notes: While this was originally intended to be the reward for the Dream On achievement, a bug resulted in it being rewarded by the Treasures of the Emerald Dream achievement, so we’re going to leave it there permanently and look for something else to potentially reward for Dream On.
    

Classes

• Druid
  
  • Guardian
    
    • Fixed an issue causing Innate Resolve to not correctly increase Frenzied Regeneration healing.
      
  • Restoration
    
    • Abundance stacks will no longer incorrectly decrease if you happen to have more Rejuvenations active than the maximum amount of Abundance stacks.
      
• Evoker
  
  • Fixed an issue that caused Evokers who used a Boost to lose 10 item levels.
    

Emerald Bounty

• Fixed an issue with Scurfpea bloom chest not showing.
  
• Fixed an issue where Dream Daisys might report an active chest you did not have.
  
• Dragon's Daffodil should no longer occasionally report an active chest that is not there.
  
• The user interface at Lavatouched Lilies should now reflect contributions correctly.

Items

• Reduced the Spirit effect on the Imbued Frostweave Slippers by 70%.
  
  • Developers’ notes: After reviewing the performance of this effect, we've decided to pull it back quite a bit as to not overshadow other items to the degree that it is. While this is a fun effect that will remain, we feel these slippers don’t necessarily need to be a required optimization for healers.
    

Quests

• Alt player-characters can now complete the World Quest "Dryad Fire Drill" without completing Chapter 1.
  
• Fixed an issue preventing completion of the Hunter Class Hall Campaign quest “Survive the Night”.