World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Hello Mages!

We have some Arcane Mage changes hitting the War Within Alpha today, and we want to go over them here. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we have goals that span all mage specializations.

These are:

• Allow you to acquire each specialization’s core gameplay with less talent point investment.
• Simplify rotational complexity.
• Provide new nodes that can help you adapt your damage profile to better match a given encounter’s demands.
• Provide competitive choice nodes that let you opt-out of complex gameplay.

Today we’re talking about Arcane, so let’s dive into the specifics.

Radiant Spark
Arcane Mage has long had the reputation of being one of the most complicated and skill expressive specializations in World of Warcraft. A large contributing factor to this is the way in which Radiant Spark asks you to optimize your rotation. Radiant Spark’s damage bonus was so substantial and so dramatically punished you for using Arcane Missiles, that you had to go about your big burn in a very scripted fashion. With the introduction of Shifting Power, Arcane Mage gained access to mini-burns that can also utilize Radiant Spark, but to facilitate optimal usage of the spell those also had to be very scripted-- and worse yet-- your mini burn script was different than your big burn script.

All of that to say, we don’t think that the exciting and challenging part of Arcane should be the memorization of a large script. Arcane’s burn gameplay should support and be enhanced by the mechanics and talents you have, not circumvent them. We feel confident that the removal of Radiant Spark in its current fashion is the right path forward to achieve that goal.

The soul of Radiant Spark will live on, however, through a new talent: Magi’s Spark. Magi’s Spark accomplishes a similar goal to Radiant Spark by making Touch of the Magi more of an exciting moment, but it now rewards you for utilizing each of your core rotational Arcane spells.

Opt-In Complexity
We’re interested in preserving Arcane’s legacy as a skill-expressive specialization, but we must also recognize that there is a considerable population of Arcane Mage players who engage with the specialization for its visual identity and fantasy-- less so for the challenging gameplay. As Arcane Mage currently stands, it does not support simpler playstyles and thus, less informed Arcane Mages will produce very middling results.

Similar to other trees across the game, the Arcane Mage tree is getting some choice nodes and supporting talents that are meant to provide meaningful throughput while offsetting some of the specialization’s inherent complexity-- and maybe letting you remove a button or two off of your action bars along the way.

As with Fire Mage, we plan on tuning the more “challenging” talents to be the most competitive choices, but we will be making sure the gap between a complex talent and its simpler alternative is small enough that you don’t feel like you’re making a huge mistake by opting out of the complexity.

Arcane Missiles
Arcane Missile’s damage and excitement was difficult to balance alongside its accessibility. If Arcane Missiles ever became too powerful, it would dominate Arcane’s rotation and become its highest priority in all situations. By restricting access to Arcane Missiles to only be castable when you have Clearcasting, it enables us to increase its damage and expand its range of effects in a more healthy way without compromising the rest of your rotation.

Clearcasting Effects
We’ve observed that there has been some frustration around effects that key into consuming Clearcasting since there can rarely be long streaks where players won’t get a proc. We’re watching the discussion around these effects, and are being sensitive to the frustration these effects might cause. Sunfury and Spellslinger both grant increased access to Clearcasting, which should smooth out the rate at which you receive Clearcasting and quell some of that frustration, but if this still ends up being a large point of frustration, expect us to take action on it.

Complexity
Increasing the approachability of Arcane Mage was a big pillar of this talent tree redesign, and we hope that those of you who have been intimidated by Arcane’s complexity in the past will give the specialization another shot once you have access to these changes.

As we gather feedback and continue to iterate on these changes, keep in mind that our goal moving forward is to move the skill expression of Arcane Mage into lining various buffs and effects up in preparation for your burn. Mastering the new talents and effects, and ensuring you’re managing these in a proper fashion to best utilize them during Touch of the Magi will be the differentiating factor between good and great Arcane Mages. Expect future changes to support this vision.

That’s all for this update. We’re excited to read your feedback on this new iteration of Arcane Mage!

Greetings Warlocks.

You’re going to see some Demonology changes in the War Within Alpha build today, alongside some additional changes to Affliction, Hellcaller, and Soul Harvester.

Destruction Warlocks – we’re working on changes for you that will become available for testing in a future build.

Here’s some context for the Demonology changes you’ll find in this build. As a refresher, here are the goals we previously stated for Demonology:

• Reduce the amount of resources Demonology generates.
• Redesign Doom to be an attractive talent choice.
• Reduce the amount of major cooldowns Demonology has access to.

Demonic Cores
Over the course of Dragonflight, we’ve wanted to and tried to reduce the number of Demonic Cores available to Demonology warlocks to rein in their mobility, resource generation, and reduce the amount of rotational time spent going back and forth between Hand of Gul’dan and Demonbolt only. In addition, we want Demonbolt to return to being a moment rather than be your primary rotational button.

In lieu of these goals, we are removing Demonic Knowledge to reduce the frequency of Demonic Cores and will make further adjustments down the road if the rate of Demonic Cores remains too high. Over the course of alpha and beta we will be tuning Demonology to compensate for this change.

Doom
This is our first iteration of Doom going into The War Within and will be iterating based off feedback we receive. We wanted to try bringing back a castable version of Doom, rather than a proc, while avoiding making it required to cast Doom multiple times before being able to perform your rotation. At the same time though, we want you to think about how you use Doom and when it is cast rather than bring back an effect like Hand of Doom that makes it largely passive.

Nether Portal
In this alpha build of The War Within, you’ll see that Nether Portal has been removed. While we love the fantasy that Nether Portal provides and that it created a moment that felt different rotationally, its gameplay and performance proved difficult to optimize. Too many major cooldowns can increase the number of peaks and valleys Demonology’s output can experience and how much effect the duration of an encounter can have on its performance.

We’d like to spend some time workshopping a new design for Nether Portal and have it return as a healthier addition to Demonology’s toolkit in the future.

What’s Next?
We’ll continue to read through feedback and the discussions happening across the community. As mentioned last week, these changes are by no means final, and we plan to iterate based off your thoughts and our own playtesting. Thank you for the discussions thus far and we’ll have more updates to share soon!

There are a few Warrior updates in today’s Alpha build.

After giving Arms and Fury access to both Bladestorm and Ravager, it was clear that Ravager had strong advantages in all situations. We’d like Bladestorm to be a strong pick for burst AOE, so we’re buffing its damage significantly, and reducing Ravager’s damage slightly. This should help make the choice between these abilities more meaningful and let each ability shine in different situations.

Arms
We’ve heard the feedback that the Arms AOE rotation lacks definition, so we’re making adjustments to Cleave to make it the centerpiece of Arms’ AOE rotation in The War Within. We think this will give a unique feel to Arms’ AOE rotation while bringing a classic iconic Warrior ability back to the limelight. We want Overpower to be an important part of Arms’ AOE rotation as well, but Dreadnaught was simply too strong in all situations. We’re reducing the damage from Dreadnaught and buffing Strength of Arms to put the choice between those talents on equal footing. This is not intended to be an overall reduction to Arms’ AOE damage, we simply feel that we’d rather Arms’ damage come from their direct damage abilities hitting harder and the subsequent bleeds and that will be reflected in the ongoing tuning of Arms overall.

Fury
We’ve also heard the feedback that Bloodthirst was not an exciting ability to use and that it felt disconnected from the rest of the Fury kit. To address this, we’re giving Bloodthirst a significant damage boost as well as adjusting several talents to affect Bloodthirst that did not previously, and adding new functionality with Deft Experience causing Bloodthirst to extend your current Enrage and changing Bloodcraze to introduce aa new interaction between Raging Blow and Bloodthirst. Our goal is to continue and extend Bloodthirst’s interaction with Enrage in new ways, as well as it contributing to Fury’s overall damage and survivability.

Protection
Protection Warrior has tools like Spell Reflect and Spell Block to protect it from magic, but its defensive toolkit is weak to ongoing or frequent magic damage. Fight Through the Flames is a new tool to help warriors survive that type of damage. We’ll keep an eye on its tuning. Additionally, we removed the damage penalty from Defensive Stance for Protection Warriors. Fighting defensively is what Protection specializes in, and we want to reduce the pressure on players to forego its defensive benefits for more damage.

Hello, Retribution Paladins.

This week’s update is about quality of life improvements.

Wake of Ashes
Retribution Paladin relies on Wake of Ashes for both of their Hero Talent trees, and it is core to Retribution’s rotation. With these in mind, we moved Wake of Ashes before the 2nd gate. Additionally, we’ve noticed that aiming Wake of Ashes caused frustrations when strafing and we’ve made changes to make it feel good while strafing as well.

Expurgation and Templar Slash
Blade of Justice and Templar Strikes are deeply connected to the Holy Power economy, and they both have talent and stat interactions that makes you press them more often. The damage over time effects from these abilities were losing value due to being reapplied in a short cadence. Which in return made pressing your core buttons feel worse. We’ve decided to make the damage over time effects roll over their remaining damage value into the next application.

Templar Strikes
We’re increasing the cooldown of Templar Strikes because it requires you to press more buttons than your usual rotation. We’re compensating by increasing its damage. We believe this change will be beneficial to the health of the rotation.

The War Within Alpha has been updated with the following changes:

NEW ZONES AND DELVES

• Hallowfall

NEW DUNGEONS

• The Dawnbreaker
• Priory of the Sacred Flame

WARBANDS

• Class set tokens from legacy raids (Shadowlands and earlier) are now Warbound and can be transferred to characters on the account.
  
  • Developer’s note: Based on community feedback and to match our overall philosophy on transmog collection, class set tokens from legacy raids (Shadowlands and earlier) are now Warbound, allowing them to be transferred to alts in order to collect the transmog of your choice. For clarity, current expansion tier set tokens will remain unchanged from their previous status of bind on pickup, as they represent a large amount of power for the character who collects them.

CHARACTER LEVEL

Developers’ note: With each phase, we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state. After making a new template character, make sure to talk to Questzertauren and he will prepare you for any available content.

• Level 75 Character Template
• Maximum Level: 78

CLASSES

• The following Hero Talents are available for playtesting in Public Alpha 3.
  
  • PRIEST
    
    • Archon (Holy/Shadow)
      
      • Archons are highly devout and deeply connected to the Light and Shadow. Archons can be blessed from higher beings to enter into an ascended state, becoming an ultimate version of themselves.
  • ROGUE
    
    • Fatebound (Assassination/Outlaw)
      
      • The Fatebound eagerly act as the Hand of Fate, sowing chaos into well-laid plans. Guided by the whims of a flipped Fatebound Coin, they deliver the ending their enemies are destined for; the ending they deserve.
      • Developer’s note: Fatebound will be accessible in the Hero Talent Tree, but there will be a handful of talents that are not fully implemented.
• HUNTER
  
  • Sentinel
    
    • Symphonic Arsenal damage reduced by 30%.
    • Sentinel debuff damage increased by 50%.
    • Lunar Storm damage increased by 50%.
• MAGE
  
  • Sunfury
    
    • Glorious Incandescence has been updated:
      
      • Now summons 4 Meteorites (was 8).
      • Increased Meteorite’s Fire Blast cooldown reduction by 100%.
      • Increased Meteorite’s Arcane Orb cooldown reduction by 100%.
      • Meteorite damage increased by 100%.
      • The timing between Meteorites dealing damage and their associated spell cooldown reduction effects have been better synchronized.
  • Spellslinger
    
    • Arcane
      
      • Controlled Instincts has been redesigned – For 8 seconds after being struck by an Arcane Orb, 30% of the direct damage dealt by an Arcane Splinter is also dealt to nearby enemies. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
      • Spellslingers now conjure two Splinters when they consume Nether Precision.
      • Splintering Orbs now conjures two Arcane Splinters when they strike a target with their Arcane Orb.
      • Arcane Splinterstorms now have a 20% chance to grant you Clearcasting (was 100%).
  • Arcane
    
    • New Talent: Energized Familiar – During Time Warp or other similar effects, your Arcane Familiar fires 4 bolts instead of 1. Damage from your Arcane Familiar has a small chance to grant you up to 2% of your maximum mana.
    • New Talent: Eureka – When a spell consumes Clearcasting, its damage is increased by 25%.
    • New Talent: Wizened Wit – The cast time of Arcane Blast is reduced by 10%. Choice node with Presence of Mind.
    • New Talent: Arcane Battery – Each time you consume Clearcasting, gain 1%/2% increased spell damage for 30 seconds, stacking up to four times. 2-point talent.
    • New Talent: Time Loop – When you gain a stack of Arcane Battery, you have a small chance to gain another stack of Arcane Battery. This effect can trigger off of itself.
    • New Talent: Aether Attunement – While at maximum stacks of Arcane Battery, your next Arcane Missiles consumes Arcane Battery dealing 150% increased damage to your primary target and also fires at up to 4 nearby enemies.
    • New Talent: Leysight – Nether Precision damage bonus increased to 30%.
    • New Talent: Leydrinker – Every 6 times you consume Nether Precision, your next Arcane Blast echoes, repeating its damage at 50% effectiveness to the primary target and up to two nearby enemies.
    • New Talent: Improved Touch of the Magi – Your Touch of the Magi now accumulates 25% of the damage you deal.
    • New Talent: Magi’s Spark – Your Touch of the Magi now also conjures a spark, increasing the damage your target receives from your next Arcane Barrage, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Missiles by 25%. Upon receiving damage from all three spells, the spark explodes, dealing Arcane damage to all nearby enemies. Choice node with Improved Touch of the Magi.
    • New Talent: Nether Munitions – When Magi’s Spark or Improved Touch of the Magi detonates, it increases the damage all affected targets take from you by 8% for 12 seconds.
    • Arcane Missiles has been redesigned – Can now only be cast when you have Clearcasting. The wording of talents that are associated with Arcane Missiles have been updated to reflect this change.
    • Nether Precision has been redesigned – Consuming Clearcasting increases the damage of your next 2 Arcane Blasts by 20% or your next 2 Arcane Barrages by 20%.
    • Arcane Familiar has been redesigned – Casting Arcane Intelligence also summons you a Familiar that attacks your enemies and increases your maximum mana by 10% for 1 hour. Now passive.
    • Illuminated Thoughts has been redesigned – Clearcasting has a 5% increased chance to trigger and spells that consume Clearcasting deal 5% more damage.
    • Concentration has been redesigned – Casting Arcane Blast has a small chance to make your next cast of Arcane Blast free.
    • Improved Prismatic Barrier is now baseline.
    • Many talents have had their positions changed.
    • Moved Charged Orb and Improved Clearcasting to the first gate.
    • Rule of Threes is no longer a choice node with Arcane Familiar.
    • The following talents have been removed:
      
      • Foresight
      • Nether Tempest
      • Reverberate
      • Mana Gem
      • Radiant Spark
      • Harmonic Echo
      • Cascading Power
  • Fire
    
    • Controlled Destruction now has a stack cap of 50 (was 99). Pyroblast increases damage the target takes from your Ignite by 1% (was 2%)
  • Frost
    
    • New Talent: Death’s Chill – While Icy Veins is active, damaging an enemy with Frostbolt increases spell damage by 1%.
    • Fractured Frost has been redesigned – While Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts hit up to 2 additional targets. Now a 1-point talent.
    • Hailstones is now a 1-point talent.
    • Fractured Frost and Freezing Winds have swapped places in the talent tree.
    • Cold Front and Coldest Snap have swapped places in the talent tree.
• PALADIN
  
  • Retribution
    
    • New Talent: Radiant Glory – Replaces Avenging Wrath/Crusade. Wake of Ashes grants you Avenging Wrath/Crusade for 10/12 seconds. Your other damaging abilities have a chance to grant you Avenging Wrath/Crusade for 5/6 seconds.
      
      • Wake of Ashes and Avenging Wrath/Crusade from this talent will function with Herald of the Sun hero talent tree’s keystone and capstone talents.
    • Expurgation now rolls over the remaining damage value when reapplied.
    • Templar Slash damage over time effect now rolls over the remaining damage value when reapplied.
    • Boundless Judgment now additionally increases the chances of your Judgments chances to trigger Highlord’s Judgment by 50%.
    • Templar Strikes damage increased by 25%.
    • Templar Strikes cooldown increased by 2.25 seconds.
    • Wake of Ashes now sends its cone attacks (including Seething Flames) towards where your camera is facing rather than where your character is facing.
    • Shield of Vengeance is now a choice node with Aegis of Protection after the 2nd talent gate.
    • Aegis of Protection now only increases the effectiveness of Divine Protection by 20% (was 10% and was also affecting Shield of Vengeance).
    • Avenging Wrath/Crusade moved up to where Shield of Vengeance was in the talent tree.
    • Wake of Ashes moved up to where Avenging Wrath/Crusade was in the talent tree, before the 2nd talent gate.
    • Seething Flames moved up to where Wake of Ashes was in the talent tree.
• WARLOCK
  
  • Diabolist
    
    • Soulburn can no longer trigger Demonic Art or Diabolic Ritual.
    • Demonic Art now lasts 60 seconds for each greater demon (was 20 seconds).
  • Hellcaller
    
    • Mark of Xavius has been redesigned – Agony/Wither damage increased by 20%/25% and the cooldown of Vile Taint/Cataclysm is reduced by 5 seconds.
    • Channel Demonfire and Internal Combustion now function with Wither.
  • Soul Harvester
    
    • Eternal Servitude now reduces the cooldown of Fel Domination by 90 seconds (was 120 seconds).
    • When Soul Anathema is reapplied, any remaining damage will be added to the new Soul Anathema.
    • Shared Fate now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • Affliction[br]
    * Malefic Rapture now deals Shadowflame damage.
    
    • Inevitable Demise has been removed.
    • New Talent: Improved Malefic Rapture – Reduces the cast time of Malefic Rapture by 10/20% and increases its damage by 5/10%.
    • Relinquished now causes Agony to have 1.10 times the chance to generate a Soul Shard (was 1.25 times).
    • Volatile Agony now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
    • Cull the Weak has been redesigned – Malefic Rapture damage is increased by 8% for each enemy it hits, up to 5 enemies.
  • Demonology
    
    • New Talent: Shadowcaster – Increases the damage of Hand of Gul’dan by 20% and Demonbolt by 10%.
    • New Talent: Pact of the Ered’ruin – When Doom is removed, you summon a Doomguard that casts 5 Doom Bolts before departing. Each Doom Bolt deals Shadow damage.
    • New Talent: Mark of Shatug – Wicked Maw causes the target to take 20% additional Shadow damage from your demons.
    • New Talent: Ferocity of F’harg – Increases the attack speed of your Dreadstalkers by 10/20% and their critical strike chance by 15/30%.
    • New Talent: Rune of Shadows – Increases all damage done by your pet by 4%. Reduces the cast time of Shadow Bolt by 25% and increases its damage by 40%.
    • New Talent: Demonic Brutality – Critical strikes from your spells and your demons deal 4% increased damage.
    • New Talent: Fiendish Prowess – Increases the attack speed of your primary demon by 25%.
    • New Talent: Improved Demonic Tactics – Increases your primary Felguard’s critical strike chance equal to 30% of your critical strike chance.
    • Doom has been redesigned – Inflicts impending doom upon the target, dealing Shadow damage and an additional Shadow damage to enemies within 10 yards after 20 seconds. Consuming a Demonic Core reduces the duration of Doom by 3 seconds. 30 seconds cooldown.
    • The following talents have been removed:
      
      • Demonic Knowledge
      • Nether Portal
      • Ner’zhul’s Volition
      • Gul’dan’s Ambition
      • Stolen Power
      • Heavy-Handed
    • Sacrificed Souls and Houndmaster’s Stratagem have been moved to row 8.
    • Houndmaster’s Stratagem has been renamed to Wicked Maw and its icon has been updated.
    • Doom and Summon Demonic Tyrant have been moved to row 9.
    • Dread Calling and Grimoire: Felguard icons have been updated.
• WARRIOR
  
  • Slam damage normalized across all specializations (Arms-only Slam damage bonus removed), and damage increased by 200%.
  • Slam damage increased by 130%. Arms Slam damage bonus reduced to 50% (was 75%).
  • Bladestorm damage increased by 70%.
  • Ravager damage decreased by 10%.
  • Arms
    
    • Cleave cooldown reduced to 3 seconds (was 6 seconds).
    • Battlelord no longer resets the cooldown of Cleave.
    • Storm of Swords now triggers from Whirlwind or Cleave and reduces the Rage cost of your next Whirlwind or Cleave.
    • Fervor of Battle now also triggers from Cleave.
    • Dreadnaught damage reduced by 58%.
    • Strength of Arms now also increases Overpower damage by 15%.
  • Fury
    
    • Bloodthirst damage increased by 43%
    • Bloodcraze now triggers from Raging Blow instead of Bloodthirst.
    • Deft Experience now causes Bloodthirst to extend your Enrage effect by 0.5/1.0 sec if you are Enraged.
    • Swift Strikes now also increases Bloodthirst’s Rage generated by 1.0/2.0 Rage.
    • Crushing Force now increases the damage of Bloodthirst by 10/20% and critical strike chance of Bloodthirst by 5/10%.
    • Bladestorm now generates 10 Rage per damage event for Fury (20 with Storm of Steel).
    • Slam Rage cost removed.

PROFESSIONS

• ENGINEERING
  
  • With this week’s build, Engineering has been enabled on Professor Instructaur. Although the profession is not entirely complete, a majority of the items should be in and ready for testing and feedback. Items with clear use or equip text present should be fully implemented.
  • Engineering’s recipe lineup is similar to Dragonflight. Single-stat, full-budget Goggles and Bracers are available to be crafted, with Goggles exclusive to Engineers and Bracers usable by everyone. Both items possess a Tinker socket which can take any of the new Tinkers added in The War Within. Additionally, popular tinkers from Dragonflight have a “Refurbished” variant you may discover with specializations which interact with Algari optional reagents. Of course, a variety of consumables and toys also await, several of which may be particularly appealing to raiders.
  • Potion Bombs are a selection of new items that possess the power budget and share the cooldown of ordinary combat potions and can be used anywhere that potions are allowed. When thrown, they deal a small amount of damage split between all enemies caught in the blast but more importantly provide a small buff to up to 5 allies also caught in the blast. The potency of this buff is the budget of the potion divided by 5 – even if fewer than 5 targets are hit. This is intended to be a considerable potion option for support-oriented players, or those who feel their personal potion for the fight is less impactful than a boost distributed between their allies.
  • Finally, there is a new recipe acquisition system for Engineering recipes for this expansion called “Inventing” from which most new recipes will be sourced from. When engaging with your profession, there are opportunities to receive or invent a Prototype item. A prototype is a unique, low-quality, consumable version of almost every on-use recipe you can acquire. You have the option to Use this prototype and attempt to learn the recipe (in true engineering fashion, it has a chance to backfire and leave you extra crispy), or you can disassemble it to acquire Hastily Scrawled Notes. Collect enough of these notes, and you will be presented with a choice UI to pick from 2 (or 3 if specialized) schematics from all of the War Within schematics you have yet to discover. As not all items can be prototyped, some are only sourced through notes, such as combat or profession equipment. Ultimately the goal is to reward engineers for engaging regularly with their profession and provide the player with the agency to make decisions about the recipes they pursue as early as possible. Eventually, once all schematics are known, you can continue to collect Warbound notes to expedite this process on your alts. We are excited to see how this system plays out and would love to hear your feedback!

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• Dropdown menu styles have been updated in many places across the game.
• Areas of the Quest Log interface have been updated with new artwork.
• A button for Professions has been added to the micromenu where the Spellbook button was previously. The Spellbook has been added to the Talents frame.
• Minimize and expand functionality has been added to the Spellbook frame.