Kaivax

We now have a dedicated thread for Season of Discovery hotfixes:

December 7, 2023

Season of Discovery

• Ashenvale PvP
  • When a player makes any hostile action against an opposing faction Lieutenant (e.g. Keepers of the Grove, Blademasters) or faction leader in the various objective areas, they will receive reputation when that enemy dies.
    • It must be an offensive action (harmful spell, harmful ability, melee attack, or ranged attack) against an enemy to receive reputation.
    • Players will receive reputation even if they are dead or no longer nearby as long as they are still in the zone when the enemy dies.
  • Players now receive 200 reputation for killing a Lieutenant and all members of the winning faction will receive 200 reputation when the faction leader dies.
  • The winning team will also receive 100 reputation per friendly Lieutenant remaining.
  • ...

December 4, 2023

Classes

• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Fixed an issue where Soul Strike would sometimes cast multiple times.

Dungeons and Raids

• Throne of the Tides

  • Fixed an issue where Mindbender Ghu’sha would prevent players from releasing spirit when defeated.

• Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope

  • Tindral Sageswift
    • Fixed an issue where multiple players can benefit from the same Fallen Feather buff.
    • Fixed an issue where Diffuse Magic can cause Tindral to be inflicted with Fiery Growth.
    • Fixed an issue where Dream Essence does not get removed if Tindral finishes casting Supernova during intermission.
    • Ride Along disabled on players with the Fallen Feather debuff on Mythic difficulty.
    • ...

Over the first 24 hours of Season of Discovery, we made a few discoveries of our own that resulted in design changes. We expect that most players haven’t seen much of this yet, but want to note it for reference.

Season of Discovery

• Healing caused by Arcane Explosion reduced by 80%.
  • We did not intend for Mage healing to trivialize content.
• The Explosive Shot rune ability has been redesigned and its damage dramatically decreased. Each time it deals damage, it now damages all enemies within 8 yards of the primary target.
• Chimera Shot damage reduced to 85% weapon damage.
  • When it comes to output, Hunters are proving to be an outlier. With these changes, Explosive Shot should fill the AOE niche and Hunters should still be very strong, but also more in-line with the output of other classes at level 25.
• Adjustments have been made to the Ashenvale PvP event to allow it ...

As explained here yesterday, the maximum rank that can be achieved in Phase 1 of Season of Discovery is rank 3. Additionally:

• The Tidal Charm trinket does not drop from Prince Nazjak in Arathi Highlands in Phase 1 of Season of Discovery.
• The Arena Master and Arena Grand Master trinkets are not available in Phase 1.
• Runes that will become available in future phases cannot be obtained in the current phase.
• World chests located in high level zones will not ever spawn d...

As we continue to closely monitor data on class performance as well as player feedback, we’ve developed the following adjustments to classes that are over- and under-performing in group content and PvP. These changes will go into effect with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region.

Classes

• Death Knight
  • Blood
    • Aberrus Class Set bonus: Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 10% increased damage (was 20%) and have a 5% chance (was 10%) to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds.
  • Unholy
    • Virulent Plague Damage increased by 15%. Not applied to PvP combat.
    • Epidemic Damage increased by 12%.
    • Festering Strike damage increased by 20%.
    • Festering...

Check out the GETTING INTO SEASON OF DISCOVERY section here:

Got it. Thank you.

We’ve deployed a fix for this issue, and are looking for any feedback on performance.

As others noted, we had a schedule conflict between these two brawls, so we put off Comp Stomp.

To compensate, we’re adjusting the whole rotation by two weeks. Comp Stomp will start on December 12, one week after the Anniversary event ends on December 7.

And then all should proceed apace.

As a temporary measure to prevent further service issues, we’ve locked the Crusader Strike realm to new players. Players who have already established their character on this realm should see no change to their ability to access the realm.

Crusader Strike is now labeled as “Locked” on the realm selection screen, and new players who wish to enjoy RP-PvP should select the Chaos Bolt realm.

Thank you!

We’re tracking a bug here and working to fix it as soon as possible.

Thank you.

As we’ve gradually increased the population caps on all Season of Discovery realms over the last three hours, it has become clear that interest in playing on the RP-PvP ruleset is high enough to justify an additional realm.

Please encourage your friends to join you on the Chaos Bolt realm for a roleplaying war with the other faction! We’ll see you there.

To answer a question we’ve seen from players who are planning to focus on ranking up in Season of Discovery — we’re adding caps to the rank you can achieve during each phase. We want to enable everyone to push rank at a reasonable pace without worrying about rushing to earn highly lucrative PvP rewards.

To start in the first phase of Season of Discovery, at level 25, the cap will be rank 3. Our current plan is to then increase the cap with each new phase, so that rank will cap at 9 for the first few weeks of level 60. Thereafter, we’re planning to increase the rank cap every few weeks along with the release of level 60 content such as Blackwing Lair, finally reaching rank 14 with the opening of The Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.

We’re looking forward to seeing the PvP action in Season of Discovery!

This effect on addons that make the game playable for some players was definitely unintended, and we apologize for that. We’re working on a hotfix that will hopefully narrow the original change so that only friendly targets are restricted. Thereafter, enemy targets will resume being available to range checking.

We’re also going to reach out to addon developers to make sure they get this message.

Looking forward, we’re working on future changes to better address the need for range checking for accessibility purposes, so we really appreciate hearing from you about things you’d find most useful.

Thanks again for all of your feedback!

Hello. I checked in with our UI/UX design team and I can confirm that this request has been received by them and is being considered alongside some similar updates they’re planning for future patches. We don’t have any details to share at this time, but we’re looking into it!

When we updated the PvP honor system in patch 1.14.4, our changes were focused on making it so that we no longer needed the old PvP Honor system script, eliminating ranking points, and removing de-ranking due to decay. As we look to the future, we’ve carefully considered the role of decay in today’s Honor system and how it interacts with increasingly competitive Honor requirements in higher ranks.

As a result, we’ve arrived at the decision to disable Honor decay in Classic Era and Season of Discovery. This will become effective starting with scheduled weekly maintenance (on December 5 in this region).

When the weekly Honor rollover occurs on December 5, you will no longer decay due to having not met the minimum Honor requirements for your rank. Please note that decay is not the same as the penalties incurred by earning dishonorable kills, which is now the only way a player can lose rank progress.

Thank you!

This fix-up is quite complex and will be done in multiple parts. The first part was preventing more Veteran gear from going out, which allows us to focus on a fixed set of items and affected players.

Only the first part of the fix has been accomplished. The rest will be coming soon.

Thank you for your patience!