Kaivax

We had an unexpected issue connecting Andorhal, Scilla, Ursin, and Zuluhed to Eonar and Velen today. That connection was not made.

We’re planning to try those again next week. We will let you know an exact date and time for it, as soon as possible.

• The Shadowlands Beta now includes updated flexibility with transmogrification of Legion Artifacts.

• Recently updated classes include ...

We’ve discovered an issue connecting Muradin and Nordrassil to Azjol-Nerub, Blackrock, and Khaz Modan.

While the other connections will be implemented tomorrow, we’re planning to try this one again next week. We will let you know an exact date and time for it, as soon as possible.

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

To increase the impact of “Mortal Wounds” and similar healing reduction effects in PvE situations, we’re doubling the magnitude of these effects against non-player enemies. The value of these effects will remain the same against players.

Warrior, Hunter, Monk

• Mortal Wounds now reduces healing taken by 50% (25% against players).

Rogue

• Wound Poison now reduces healing taken by 8% per stack (4% against players).

Warlock

• Mortal Cleave/Legion Strike now reduces healing taken by 20% (10% against players).

In this week’s build of the Shadowlands Beta, health potions now have a 5 minute cooldown. Additionally, they are no longer limited to one use per encounter.

Similar to the recent change to combat potions, this is intended to make potion use less of a hassle, less expensive, and more decision-oriented in various situations throughout the game.

Health potions will continue to be in a separate cooldown category from Healthstones and combat potions. Additionally, the Kyrian Phial of Serenity is now on a separate cooldown from health potions, and has been updated to restore 20% health, with a 3 minute cooldown. However, Phial of Serenity is limited to one use per encounter.

With this week’s update to the Shadowlands Beta, players will have new options and availability for transmogrification of their Legion Artifacts.

Now, Legion Artifact appearances for all specs of your class are now available in their respective weapon categories. For example, Doomhammer will be found in “One-handed maces”.

The new Artifact appearances obey the usual transmogrification rules. For example, you can use the Ashbringer appearance on your two-handed mace, but not on a one-hand shield. Main-hand and off-hand Artifact appearances are granted independently in these tabs, so you can use Oathseeker appearances independently from Truthguard ones.

Now, a long as you possess the required proficiencies, there are no restrictions on duplicate appearances, and there are no restrictions on which hand they can be used in. For example, you can dual-wield Doomhammers or even Fury of the Stonemothers.

The existing transmogrification system for Legion Artifacts...

Hello! This week’s build includes updates to many of the Warrior covenant abilities.

The Kyrian ability Spear of Bastion has had its damage decreased by about 45%, and now begins to deal reduced damage when striking more than 5 targets. This is similar to changes made to Thunder Clap and Revenge last week. Rather than a strict target cap and full damage, we felt it was important to retain Spear’s capabilities as a utility spell, while reigning in its damage contribution in high target-count scenarios.

The Night Fae ability Ancient Aftershock no longer applies a damage over time effect to enemies it hits. Instead:

• The ground will continue to expel anima, dealing Nature damage to up to 5 enemies and generating Rage per enemy over 12 seconds. Every 3 seconds, targets are briefly knocked down.

These additional knockdowns are short, 0.5 second stuns that are not subject to diminis...

In this week’s PTR and Beta builds, several changes have been made to bring the Maelstrom resource back for Elemental Shaman. Many months ago, we had opted to try not having a special resource on the Shaman class, and went forward with the plan to remove Maelstrom and rebuild Fulmination as the ability it was prior to the Legion expansion. Ever since the first Alpha builds, we have been watching reactions and listening to how people feel about using the Fulmination buff. Many changes were made to make more and more spells and abilities interact with Fulmination, any sort of randomness was removed, and we’ve wound up back in a place that feels almost exactly like Maelstrom, only instead of an easy-to-read resource bar on your unit frame, it’s hidden as a stacking buff in your buff bars.

After some discussion in the past weeks, we have decided to just revert the changes that replaced Maelstrom with Fulmination.

There are still a few remaining places where Fulmination ma...

This week’s Shadowlands build has a few updates to address recent Unholy feedback. Our focus with these changes is: Rune economy, Scourge Strike not preferring targets with Festering Wounds, and the start sequence.

• Scourge Strike now prefers targets with Festering Wounds while inside Death and Decay
• Apocalypse has a new rank upgrade, learned at level 58, that causes it to generate 2 Runes.
• Unholy Blight now applies Virulent Plague to enemies it hits.
• Unholy Strike is renamed Unholy Assault, the Rune cost is removed, and the haste increased back to 20%.
• Soul Reaper’s cooldown is reduced to 6 seconds (was 8 seconds) to help promote more gameplay around the ability and its duration.

Thank you for all the feedback and we look forward to hearing more as you get a chance to play with these changes.

Additionally, this week we want to highlight a change we’ve done to the Shadow Priest mastery.

In this change we’ve redesigned the mastery to be something more inline with the new changes, encouraging the Priest to stack their damage over time effects on targets for maximum effect. For each of your damage over time effects on the target, your damage is increased.

A twist: while in Void Form you gain full benefit of this mastery by dealing full damage on all targets, assuming they have all of your DoTs, whether they’re present on the target or not. We’ve decided to call this new mastery “Shadow Weaving,” invoking the name and spirit of an a legacy Shadow Priest talent.

• Your damage is increased by x% for each of Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague on the target. During Void Form, all targets receive the maximum effect.

Let us know what you think!

Thank you, Monk community, for your patience throughout Shadowlands development. We’re especially grateful for the many detailed bug reports that Monk testers have submitted.

In this week’s build, you’ll see a number of updates to Monk leveling rewards. These include several spell upgrades, as well as the removal of Dual Wield and 2-handed requirements for Fists of Fury (Windwalker) and Blackout Kick (Brewmaster). We also performed a pass on all of the Celestial invocation spells, adding Rank 2 upgrades for each and re-designing Yu’lon and Chi-Ji for Mistweavers.

Brewmaster
Level 58 – Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox – Rank 2

• The damage of Niuzao’s Stomp is now increased by 25% of the Stagger damage you have purified in the last 5 seconds.

Windwalker
Level 58 – Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger – Rank 2

• Xuen strikes your enemies with Empowered Tiger Lightning every 8 seconds, dealing 10% of damag...

How time flies! WoW Classic launched one year ago today.

On behalf of the everyone at Blizzard, thank you for joining us on this amazing journey back in time that somehow led to the creation of so many wonderful new things. It has been awesome to see the WoW Classic community forge many new bonds and find many new ways to enjoy this game we love.

Along with everyone on the engineering, production, QA, support, and publishing teams, I can’t wait to see what the future holds in store for WoW Classic. We hope we get to celebrate this day with you for many more years!

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PDT on Thursday, August 27, the following realm connections will be made:

• The Antonidas and Uldum realms will join the Akama, Dragonmaw, Eldre’Thalas, Korialstrasz, and Mug’thol realms.
• The Muradin and Nordrassil realms will join the Azjol-Nerub, Blackrock, and Khaz Modan realms.
• The Anvilmar and Undermine realms will join the Alterac Mountains, Balnazzar, Gorgonnash, The Forgotten Coast, and Warsong realms.
• The Andorhal, Scilla, Ursin, and Zuluhed realms will join the Eonar and Velen realms. (This connection was begun, but not completed, last week)
• The Arathor and Drenden realms will join the Anub’arak, Chromaggus, Crushridge, Garithos, Nathrezim, and Smolderthorn realms.
• The Garona realm will join the Icecrown and Malygos realms. (This connection was begun, but not completed, last week)
• Kargath and Norgannon will join Agamaggan, Archimonde, Bu...

All temporary character transfer restrictions have been removed.

Over the weeks since several high-population realms were configured to allow two layers, and therefore twice as many concurrent players, we’ve carefully observed and tracked the player populations on those realms. Our goal has been to reach a conclusion – a time at which we could safely “delayer” and return those realms to the same population controls as every other realm.

Today, we have done exactly that. All realms in this region are now operating without layers.

Additionally, we’ve disabled the temporary restrictions on character transfers from realm to realm in this region.

Today’s realm maintenance for connections has concluded. The following realm connections are completed and live:

• Eldre’Thalas and Korialstrasz to Akama, Dragonmaw, and Mug’thol
• Korgath to Cenarius, Perenolde, and Cairne
• Blood Furnace, Mannoroth, and Nazjatar to Azgalor, Azshara, Thunderlord, and Destromath
• Madoran and Dawnbringer to Azuremyst and Staghelm

Unfortunately, two connections could not be completed, due to technical issues:

• Ursin, Andorhal, Scilla, and Zuluhed to Eonar and Velen
• Garona to Icecrown and Malygos

We’ll let you know about the next round of connections as soon as possible.