World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Good evening everyone,

When we launched Season of Discovery, we made some bold decisions, one of those was the creation of Enforced Faction Balanced PvP Realms. When we did this, we did our best to communicate some caveats that this may not end up being the experience you want from World of Warcraft, as PvP realms can be an intensely challenging experience at times. While we are very happy with how the faction balance system has worked out, we know from player feedback internally and externally that the reality of a balanced presence of both factions on a single realm, and that individual layers will not always have equal factions, means that some folks have now decided they would instead prefer a PvE ruleset, but have characters locked to these PvP realms.

To that end, we genuinely want everyone to have the best time they can in Season of Discovery, so over the next few weeks, we will be periodically opening Free Character Transfers from PvP realms to PvE realms. These transfer windows will open and close fairly rapidly, and we offer no guarantee that you will be able to transfer. The reasoning for this is simple; we need to ensure that one faction doesn’t disproportionally leave a realm, undoing months of hard work with realm faction balance.

These transfer options will be periodically available starting Tuesday and will open and close throughout the rest of this week.

As always, thank for you joining us in Season of Discovery. We’ve experimented a lot and learned much that will ultimately lead to bigger and better things.

Tomorrow, during each region’s normal maintenance period, we will apply the following adjustments to classes in Season of Discovery.

Druid

• The Natural Weapons talents now increases all damage done by druids in Season of Discovery, instead of just physical damage.
• The Gale Winds rune now reduces the mana cost of Hurricane by 60%.
• Swiftmend no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on the target when used.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Please note that it does still require Rejuvenation or Regrowth to be on the target to be used.

Paladin

• Seal of Righteousness damage can now be critical hits.
• Sacred Shield’s duration is extended to 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Crusader Strike has now gained an additional effect: Crusader strike now refreshes all judgement effects active on the target to a 30 second remaining duration.
• Seal of Martyrdom can now “twist” with other seals, including Seal of Command.
  
  • Developers’ notes: Seal “twisting” was an interesting emergent effect that became popular during the original Burning Crusade, that utilized the slower server messaging system used in early versions of WoW to slightly extend the duration of the Paladin’s active seal for a short time whenever a second seal was cast. This effectively allowed paladins to momentarily gain the benefit of two seals at once if they timed the application of a new seal to line up perfectly just before their weapon swing. This is something we would have considered a bug at the time, but for many players, it became a popular feature of the class, allowing skilled players to increase their output with precision gameplay.
    We recreated this playstyle in Burning Crusade Classic and since then it’s been a popular request in other versions of original WoW, including Season of Discovery. We had concerns about allowing Martyrdom and Command specifically to be twisted together in Season of Discovery for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the playstyle is highly mana inefficient, it largely requires addons such as a weapon swing timer to function properly, and twisting can be unintuitive for less experienced players. As the game matures and we continue to listen to player feedback however, we recognize that for some, this is part of the charm and uniqueness of playing a paladin during those early eras of WoW’s history. We consider this change to be experimental and we will watch the performance and behavior of Retribution closely after this change. Should it prove problematic, we may revert this change or apply additional adjustments later. We greatly appreciate the feedback we’ve received about this thus far.
    With this change to allow twisting, we do not expect to see a major change in the “optimal” way to play Retribution right away. Due to the interaction between Art of War, Martyrdom, and Exorcism, we’ll likely need a larger redesign and changes to that interaction to truly add more diversity to the Retribution playstyle. We’re evaluating options here for potential changes we can make either via hotfix during Phase 3 or as part of a larger effort for Phase 4.

Priest

• Shadowform now increases all shadow damage done by 25% (was 15%).

Rogue

• Saber Slash bleed now stacks up to 5 times.
• Saber Slash bleed now also increases the impact damage done by Sinister Strike and Saber Slash by 15% per stack for the rogue who applied the bleed.
• Saber Slash bleed now deals 3% of the rogue’s Attack Power in damage per tick (was 5%).

Shaman

• Mental Dexterity now only triggers from dealing damage with Stormstrike and Lava Lash, and it now lasts 30 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Burn now increases Flame Shock Damage by 100% and flame shock DoT duration by 6 seconds, and causes Flame Shock to strike up to 5 targets (was 3 targets).
  
  • Developers’ notes: We’ve received a lot of feedback about the overall usability of mental dexterity, particularly for Elemental Shamans. This ability was not intended to be used by elemental, so the adjustments we’ve made are to help ensure its usage is a bit more enhancement-centric. To compensate, we’ve increased the output and usability of the Burn rune, with a slight quality-of-life improvement in the form of a Flame Shock duration increase which allows two Lava Burst casts to be used within a single Flame Shock duration. This is likely not going to be enough to overall bring elemental up to the level we want, so we intend to continue to make other tactical adjustments in future class adjustment updates as needed.

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In the Weeks to Come
We’re carefully planning for more adjustments to Hunters, Mages, Shamans, and Warlocks in future updates. We really appreciate the feedback we’ve received since the start of Phase 3 and look forward to sharing more about our next round of adjustments with you soon.

Mark your calendars for the release of the next content update for Dragonflight—Dark Heart— on May 7, and for the World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria event on May 16 at 10:00 am PDT globally!

Dragonflight: Dark Heart
The Dark Heart content update launches, May 7 and ushers in the final chapter of the Dragonflight expansion setting the stage for the story in the upcoming expansion, The War Within™.

Draenei and Troll characters can also embark on new questlines to lay claim to their new heritage armors, Kul Tiran Humans can select from six new hair colors, maximum-level characters will gain access to all Dragonflight regardless of Renown —and more.

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World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria
Get into the mix of things when the World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria event goes live on May 16! This time-limited event allows players to re-experience the entirety of the Mists of Pandaria expansion at an accelerated rate from level 10-70. All loot has been completely overhauled and has powerful new effects allowing players to shape their experience, power up, and power on. Features include:

• Accelerated Leveling and Content allowing you to take on nearly every quest, scenario, dungeon and raid.
  
• Create a new WoW Remix character starting at level 10 to adventure through the event up to level 70.
  
• A mountain of loot: Get powerful items from everywhere— quests, chests, creatures, bosses.
  
• Customizable items allowing you to power up as far as you can go to take on tougher content.
  
• Convert unwanted items into Bronze which can be used to upgrade items or purchase cosmetics.
  
• Keep what you collect: Take your collection of transmogs with you into The War Within.

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Read our previously published article on the World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandaria and check out the latest PTR content update notes (English only) on the forums to learn more details.

We look forward to taking on these new adventures with you. We'll see you in the Dragon Isles and Pandaria!