World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

We’re currently working on some hotfixes for PvP tuning, intended to go live with the next weekly restarts. We’re planning the following changes:

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Protection
  
  • Light of the Protector and Hand of the Protector’s healing reduced by 40% when engaged in combat with enemy players.
  • Mana regeneration reduced by 30% when engaged in combat with enemy players.
  • Developers’ Note: With the launch of 8.1, the additional healing granted by Hand of the Protector was changed to be based off of the target’s missing health, rather than the Paladin’s missing health. While healing is a core element of Protection Paladin survivability, this has proven to be more effective in PvP than intended. Protection Paladins should feel like they can survive high amounts of damage, and heal their teammates in a pinch, but not provide consistent and sustained healing to their teammates throughout a match.

Items

• The absorb provided by Diamond-Laced Refracting Prism is now cleared at the start of an Arena or Battleground, and considered a Magic effect for dispels.
• Bwonsamdi’s Bargain can no longer prevent death while participating in Arenas or Rated Battlegrounds.

Classes

• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Demonic Gateway should no longer change your camera facing after being cast on a boat, and the visuals will now play correctly when being cast on a boat.
    

Dungeons and Raids

• Darkshore
  
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing some players from Bonus Rolling on the Darkshore World Boss.
    
  • Developers’ notes: This issue was quite challenging to solve, and we’d like to thank players who reported occurrences of it to Blizzard Customer Support.
    
• Battle of Dazar’alor
  
  • Lady Jaina Proudmoore
    
    • Adjusted Ice Shard and Grasp of Frost so that Jaina will cast while moving and be easier to maneuver around the field.
      
    • Fixed a bug where the Ice Shard debuff on Heroic and Mythic difficulties was not increasing in damage as stated in the tooltip.
      
    • Fixed a bug where players were unintentionally gaining additional stacks of Chilling Touch on Mythic difficulty.
      

Player versus Player

• Sinister Gladiator Azerite items upgraded by a Battleborn Sigil or Warlord's Trophy now have the correct amount of stamina.
  
• Resolved an issue that prevented the Insignia family of PvP trinkets (such as Sinister Gladiator's Insignia) from being activated by heals.

Kul Tiran and Zandalari Unlock Requirements
I think one of the major worries was if a dungeon/raid would also be part of the requirements.
I’m really glad there not along with having to being exalted with the other factions too just to unlock those two.
We clarified that raiding wasn’t needed and people immediately wanted clarity on what was needed down to specifics. I put this together to help ensure everybody was on the same page and if they aren’t exalted or avoid doing quests, they can hop on those right away.

Since the zones are separated, will unlocking KT humans also unlock the Zandalari?
If you have unlocked Kul Tiran and you want a Zandalari then you need to do all of the horde requirements on a horde character. The mag’har/dark iron worked this way as well if I’m remembering right.

Serious question: I have an Alliance toon that has met the requirements for Kul Tirans. If I faction swap to Horde before unlocking Kul Tirans, will I still be able to complete their scenario and unlock them? I do not have another 120 Alliance character.

While I am not 100% sure on how the achievements themselves work with a faction change - the point that was mentioned above would be the primary issue: you would need a max level Alliance character to do the recruitment questline. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dungeons and Raids

• Battle of Dazar’alor
  
  • Stormwall Blockade
    
    • The interval between spawns of Energized Storms has been reduced by 25% on all non-Mythic difficulties.
      
    • Developers’ notes: This reverts one of the changes made yesterday. In combination with the health reduction to Laminaria and the Energized Storm, this additional change excessively reduced the difficulty of what was meant to be a challenging encounter deep in Battle of Dazar’alor, so we’re rolling it back. All other changes from yesterday remain.
      

Items

• Heart of Azeroth
  
  • Fixed a bug that caused Bonded Souls to target pets. It will now only select the nearest friendly player while it is active.
    
  • Monk
    
    • Fury of Xuen can now stack up to 100 times (was 67).
      
    • Developers’ notes: In a hotfix made yesterday, the per-stack percentage went from 1.5 to 1%. We want the total chance to still be able to stack up to 100%.
      

World

• Sylvanas has dispatched additional Horde guard support near the Banshee's Wail and Warfront staging areas of the Port of Zandalar. The scamps with scrolls that were previously found in the Warfront area have been relocated to other parts of the Grand Bazaar.
  
• Fixed a bug at some Guard Posts that caused NPC guards to ignore nearby players who need killin’.

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