Kaivax

This week’s Shadowlands Beta build includes several notable updates that are now ready for testing.

Renown User Interface
This UI has been revamped. It is no longer attached to your Reservoir UI NPC. It now has its own dedicated NPC in your Sanctum. It should be much clearer now what your past and upcoming rewards are, and some rewards on the Renown track have been put in more appropriate places.

Soulbinds
Talents have also been reorganized, and players will find that in most cases, the talent that was previously the final ability is now the starter ability.

In cases where that didn’t happen, the existing talents have been tuned to match the a more-expected power level.

Ve’nari Torghast Items
Ve’nari in the Maw now sells several items that serve as meta-progression for Torghast. You can buy the items and use them, but they aren’t functional in this build. We expect to have all of this funct...

Greetings!

As some of you know, we’ve made adjustments to Shadow Priests lately to balance their damage, as heavy iteration on the specialization led to some things getting out of alignment. In this week’s new Beta build, we’ve made more adjustments.

At the same time, we saw that some of the Insanity reductions from last week hurt the flow of the rotation, so we’ve reverted some of those. We also want to make sure that Mind Blast feels important to use over Mind Flay.

This week’s changes include:

• Dark Thought duration increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds).
  • Developers’ notes: We’ve also decreased Dark Thought’s max stacks to 1, as 5 felt excessive. We are open to feedback about how this feels, as always.
• Mind Blast generates 8 Insanity (was 7).
• Mind Flay damage reduced by 15%.
  • Developers’ notes: Shadow was proving too powerful in single target situations. This helps address that while sti...

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 21, we will continue our raid tests in Naxxramas, with the Plague Quarter.

2:00 p.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. EDT) to 6:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 p.m. EDT)

Bosses Available:

• Noth the Plaguebringer
• Heigan the Unclean
• Loatheb

We’ve made the following slight adjustments to the test environment:

• Johnny McWeaksauce now also exists in all the capital cities (near the bank) to help players teleport to Naxxramas.
• The buff in Naxxramas has been reduced in strength to keep groups from inadvertently skipping mechanics that we’d like to see tested. It’s still a significant buff, to make sure pick-up-groups can test.

This testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on thi...

Yes. We’ve found the bug here, and a fix is on the way.

Hello!

I can confirm that there is a bug here, however, it’s a display-only bug. The bonus rewards are being rewarded as expected.

We intend to fix this in a future version of the app.

Thank you!

Yes, it does appear that the missing 32-bit Android version of the app is now in place and available for use.

Hotfixes

October 23, 2020

Classes

• Demon Hunter
  • General
    • Fixed an issue that caused Glyph of Crackling Flames to break the animations of several abilities.
• Rogue
  • General
    • Tricks of the Trade can now be cast on characters level 10 and above.
• Shaman
  • Enhancement
    • Fixed an issue where the Hailstorm (Talent) buff persisted after switching specializations.
• Warlock
  • General
    • Warlocks below level 10 now have a pet action bar to control their summoned demons.

Dungeons and Raids

• Ny’alotha, the Waking City
  • The damage a...

Tomorrow, Friday, October 16, we will continue our raid tests in Naxxramas, with the Arachnid Quarter.

2:00 p.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. EDT) to 6:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 p.m. EDT)

Available Bosses:

• Anub’Rekhan
• Grand Widow Faerlina
• Maexxna

This testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: To facilitate and expedite testing, there is an NPC named Johnny McWeaksauce that has taken up temporary residence at Light’s Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands. He will provide players with Naxxramas attunement and instant teleportation into the Naxxramas raid. Johnny’s brother Jimmy,...

For the last few expansions, World of Warcraft minimum specs have required a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) that is shader-model-5 compatible (DirectX 11.0 or higher). With the newer graphical features included in the Shadowlands Pre-patch, the game has ceased supporting all GPUs that are not compatible with shader-model-5.

We’ve discovered that a very small number of players are attempting to run World of Warcraft on older hardware that cannot play the game after patching.

At this time, we’re working on a solution that could allow the game to operate on some older hardware, at the lowest graphical settings, with some graphic features unavailable. We expect this solution to take at least a couple of weeks to develop and test.

We will let you know when this workaround is available. Thank you.

Hello.

Yes, the companion app is currently unavailable today (Wednesday, October 14).

Simply put, we had a bug with the new version of the app that goes with the Shadowlands pre-patch, and we’re releasing an updated and fixed version soon.

The fixed version may be available in your device’s store before we’ve had a chance to do the WoW realm restarts that are required for it to all work.

After you’ve gotten the app update, and we’ve done realm restarts in this region, it should work as expected.

A little while ago, we enabled the Scourge Invasion on the Public Test Realm (PTR).

This event was first released with original WoW patch 1.11, and will happen in WoW Classic concurrent with the release of the Naxxramas raid.

The basic structure of this event is that Necropoleis appear in six different zones, with crystals spawning beneath, and undead spawning around those. Killing the undead allows you to combat the crystals, which in turn allows you to clear the necropolis and defend the zone.

You’ll find scourge invasions marked on the World Map with a purple skull in:

Eastern Plaguelands
Burning Steppes
Blasted Lands
Tanaris
Winterspring
Azshara

See you there!

There were changes made to Gladiator titles and mounts over the course of the Shadowlands Beta, so we’d like to clarify our intentions.

• Each season, the “Adjective Gladiator” title (e.g. Sinister Gladiator or Corrupted Gladiator) is awarded to characters that end the season in the top 0.1% of the 3v3 Arena ladder. This title is permanent and character specific, and includes legacy “Rank 1” titles which were earned under the old Battlegroup system.
• The “Gladiator” title is awarded to characters that win 50 3v3 games while at the Elite Rank. This title is seasonal – it is available for the duration of the season in which it is earned, and it is character specific.
• The Gladiator mount (e.g. the Corrupted Gladiator’s Proto-Drake) is awarded under the same circumstances as the “Gladiator” title and is available to all characters on that account permanently.

Going into Shadowlands, the availability of the mount is the only change here. Any othe...

Yes, and there were changes made to Gladiator titles and mounts over the course of the Shadowlands Beta, so we’d like to clarify our intentions.

• Each season, the “Adjective Gladiator” title (e.g. Sinister Gladiator or Corrupted Gladiator) is awarded to characters that end the season in the top 0.1% of the 3v3 Arena ladder. This title is permanent and character specific, and includes legacy “Rank 1” titles which were earned under the old Battlegroup system.
• The “Gladiator” title is awarded to characters that win 50 3v3 games while at the Elite Rank. This title is seasonal – it is avai...

Tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, we will be begin our raid tests in Naxxramas, starting with the Military Quarter.

2:00 p.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. EDT) to 6:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 p.m. EDT)

Available Bosses:

• Instructor Razuvious
• Gothik the Harvester
• The Four Horsemen

Known Issues:

• Gothik the Harvester’s encounter may fail to clean up properly after a wipe.

This testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: To facilitate and expedite testing, there is an NPC named Johnny McWeaksauce that has taken up temporary residence at Light’s Hope Chapel ...

Following further review, we’ve decided to wait to address this issue. The change announced for this week will not be implemented.

We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve developed a solution to the issue of non-existent characters being counted, that conforms with the great deal of feedback we’ve received.

Correct.

As we work through issues that are making leveling through Ardenweald and Revendreth slower than intended, we’ve seen some Beta testers reach a point where they have to spend extra time finding XP in order to complete the Revendreth campaign.

We’re creating a more comprehensive fix, and that’s going to take a few days, but in the meantime, this is a Beta hotfix that boosts quest experience in Ardenweald and Revendreth, so that testers can have a smoother leveling experience in the meantime.

There’s a big update to the app on the way!

I just want to confirm that an intentional fix was made a couple of days ago to allow experience gains to be disabled while in Timewalking Campaigns.

We are currently in the process of tuning Legendary items, so in this latest Shadowlands Beta build, you may see many a number of Legendary effects have had their power reduced.

We’ve recently had internal discussions about our tuning targets for Legendaries and concluded that we were aiming too low with respect to their power. We’re working through another tuning pass on all of these items, and you should see further adjustments in an upcoming build.

Thank you for all of the feedback about Shadow Vault. We set out to create a cool new AoE finisher for Subtlety Rogues, but heard your feedback that Shadow Vault was frustrating due to its knockup effect.

Additionally, the visual similarity with Shuriken Storm was bound to get repetitive as you alternate between the generator and finisher. We created a new visual kit based on the idea of launching an explosive black powder over the heads of your enemies.

Please let us know what you think about this version of the finisher.