Kaivax

In this week’s Shadowlands build, Mirrors of Torment has been updated with new functionality that grants you Brain Freeze, Fire Blast cooldown reduction, or Mana when a mirror is consumed based on your spec.

Mirrors of Torment will also now proc from auto attacks, but can only occur once every 6 seconds.

The goal with these changes is to give Mirrors of Torment a little more consistent PvE throughput and not just being a niche PvP ability for those Mages looking to join the Venthyr.

In this week’s Shadowlands build, Death’s Due has been updated and its buff and debuffs are no longer applied each time it deals damage.

Now your Heart Strike, Scourge Strike, and Obliterate apply Death’s Due to the target, reducing the damage they deal to you and increasing your Strength by the same amount. The duration of the buff/debuff has also been reduced and the maximum amount of stacks has been reduced to 8.

In addition to these changes, Death’s Due has a unique bonus for Frost that allows their Obliterate to hit 1 additional target while they stay within Death’s Due.

These changes to Death’s Due are aimed at making it a little more rotation-impactful, rather than just a passive bonus when casting it, while making it more balanced against the other Covenant choices.

Hello.

In our latest updates to Shadowlands, Colossus Smash and Warbreaker (if talented) will apply Deep Wounds from Arms Warrior’s Mastery. This change is aimed primarily at giving Arms an additional option for applying Deep Wounds in multi-target scenarios via Warbreaker, without having to rely solely on Bladestorm and Cleave (if talented), and to have Deep Wounds be reliably applied to both Colossus Smash targets when Sweeping Strikes is active.

This change should be testable, but will not yet be reflected in the Deep Wounds tooltip.

This week’s Shadowlands builds come with a tuning pass to each of the Demon Hunter Covenant abilities.

The Hunt had recently been redesigned to have a lower cooldown DoT application to 5 targets, and the removal of the teleport and fury generation bonus. We’ve since the tuned the ability to be more competitive with Sinful Brand.

Similarly, Elysian Decree has had its damage increased significantly.

While we like the thematic texture of Fodder to the Flame, we’ve observed your feedback about the way it ties a very mobile class to a specific area. We think this could be an interesting tradeoff, but the benefits of standing in the pool of demon blood need to be compelling.

Stay tuned as we iterate on this idea further.

Hello, Monks! We have a slate of changes and updates in this week’s Beta build.

Changes

• Energizing Elixir has been removed from the global cooldown.
• Spinning Crane Kick’s damage is now increased by up to 6 unique targets (was 5) struck by Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, or Rising Sun Kick, up to 60% damage (was 50% damage).
• Haste now affects the periodic of Crackling Tiger Lightning.
• Weapons of Order has been redesigned for Windwalker Monks. Now, for the next 30 seconds, your Mastery is increased by 13%. Additionally, Rising Sun Kick reduces Chi costs by 1 for 5 seconds, and Blackout Kick reduces the cooldown of affected abilities by an additional 1 second.
• Faeline Stomp now deals Nature damage (or heals if Mistweaver) to targets in front of the Monk when cast and continues to deal additional damage to targets caught in the Faelines.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Rising Sun ...

I’d like to take a step back on this subject and look at the big picture.

As has been observed in the Beta, loot quantities overall are reduced in Shadowlands. Following the proclamation “let loot be loot”, we’re entering into a world without Warforging and Titanforging, where getting an item from relevant content should feel rewarding on its own more often, without needing to hope for random upgrades.

Bonus rolls no longer exist, and the Great Vault captures the value they used to provide to raiders. Non-raiders should also factor in the Great Vault, as completing a Mythic Keystone +15 will award a choice of up to three item-level 226 pieces from the Great Vault.

Currently in the Shadowlands Beta / first tier of the expansion, PvP loot for top ratings caps out at item level 226.

While outdoor world gameplay and professions offer a range of epic gear, the very strongest loot in WoW comes from the three organized multiplayer endgame progression paths: Rate...

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. PDT (11:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. EDT) on September 24, the following realm connection will be made:

• Exodar and Medivh will be connected to Alleria and Khadgar.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 3:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. AEST (1:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. AWST) on September 25, the following realm connection will be made:

• Saurfang will be connected to Caelestrasz and Nagrand.

Only the realms listed above will be offline during these maintenance periods, which may be completed before or after the predicted end time.

Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of players around the world who voted in polls over the last two weeks, we now know which of the proposed mounts you most want to ride in 2021. The winner is:

• The Wandering Ancient

  • A large and leafy mount, the Wandering Ancient invites you to climb aboard and grab ahold of its branches as you embark on a lumbering expedition.

Our designers will now work on bringing this mount to life, so that all players who purchase Shadowlands will receive it.

And again, thank you for voting!

So that we can address some issues with Torghast, Tower of the Damned, access to this feature has been disabled for a few days in the Shadowlands Beta.

Torghast the test realm is available.

We’ll post further updates when we’re ready to resume testing in the tower.

Thank you!

The connection for Exodar and Medivh to Alleria and Khadgar cannot be completed tomorrow. We will reschedule this one for next week.

No hacks or cheats are allowed.

Our anti-cheat team takes action against botters and hackers 24/7, and every time I’ve asked them “how many botters were actioned yesterday?”, the number is always in the thousands. That’s a global number, by the way.

Our anti-cheat team focuses on popular botting spots, especially areas that are commonly reported by players. For example, Dire Maul has been one such area for cheaters, so a lot of attention from my colleagues has been put on Dire Maul recently.

Please be encouraged to keep using the in-game reporting system for cheat/hack reports. Those complement our systems that automatically look for the ever-changing strategies and software that the botters are using, and reports really help us zero in on new hacks more quickly than we would have without them.

Thank you!

As we mentioned in last week’s Shadowlands Development Update, we’ve heard a lot of feedback from the PvP community that Conquest vendors in Shadowlands don’t offer enough of most players’ desired stats, leading to the sense that much of the best gear for PvP will have to be earned outside of PvP. We don’t want that to be the case.

Our current plan to address these concerns should become available in the Shadowlands Beta over the next couple of weeks.

First, we’re shifting t...

Hello.

A few minutes ago, we applied a hotfix to the Shadowlands Beta that should prevent testers from getting into this broken state.

It should also reset the soulbind tree for test characters that were in the broken state.

Thank you for the bug reports!

I’ve updated the OP to reflect that the date of the AU connection has changed. It will now occur on September 18, AEST.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. PDT on September 17, the following realm connections will be made:

• Hydraxis and Terenas will be connected to Drak’thul, Mok’Nathal, Silvermoon, Skywall, Shadowsong, and Borean Tundra.
• Darrowmere and Windrunner will be connected to Draka and Suramar.
• Ghostlands and Kael’thas will be connected to Grizzly Hills, Lothar, Malfurion, Trollbane, and Gnomeregan.
• Black Dragonflight, Gul’dan, and Skullcrusher will be connected to Andorhal, Eonar, Velen, Scilla, Ursin, and Zuluhed.
• Exodar and Medivh will be connected to Alleria and Khadgar.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 3:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. AEST on September 18, the following realm connection will be made:

• Aman’thul will be connected to Dath’Remar and Khaz’goroth.

We are planning more realm connections for low-population realms, and we will post a new notif...

With this week’s update to the Shadowlands Beta, we’re kicking off a test of some special events for Torghast, and we have them set on a daily rotation. The first Anima Hoard you discover on a run will have unique choices that help define the rest of your run.

The events include:

• Beasts of Prodigum: Your first Maw power chest allows you to gain control of a powerful Maw beast that fights alongside you during your run. Subsequent Maw powers you receive in this run have a chance to modify the beast and grant it special abilities.
• Chorus of Dead Souls: Your first Maw power chest allows you to assume the form of a Deadsoul Chorus, granting you special abilities. While in this form, your party members can right-click you to join your form and cast on the move. Subsequent Maw powers enhance your Deadsoul Chorus form in a variety of ways.
• Unbridled Darkness: Your first Maw power chest can grant you ...

I’ve added two spells to the OP:

Druid: Innervate
Monk: Mana Tea

They no longer invoke a GCD in the latest build of the Shadowlands Beta.

We’ve continued to work from feedback that the Unholy opener can take too long to get going. Even with attempts to help alleviate this issue over the last few weeks, it’s still not where we would like it to be.

Unholy has quite a few iconic abilities and they aren’t easily removed. Thus, our goal with this week’s latest build is to reduce the number of cooldowns in the opener, help out Rune economy, and give access to a baseline AoE Runic Spender.

Unholy

• Summon Gargoyle is moved back as a level 50 talent.
• Unholy Pact moved to the level 45 talent tier.
• Epidemic is baseline.
• Dark Transformation has been removed, and its functionality has been added to Apocalypse.
  • Developers’ notes: Legendaries and Conduits that interact with your ghoul while they have Dark Transformation still function as they did prior to this change.
• Death Coil has updated to reduce the cooldown of Apocalyps...

I’ve updated the OP to clarify what’s happening with our AU realms:

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 3:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. AEST on September 11, the following realm connections will be made:

• Gundrak and Jubei’Thos will be connected to Dreadmaul, Frostmourne, and Thaurissan.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 7:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. PDT on September 10, the following realm connections will be made:

• Frostmane, Ner’zhul, and Tortheldrin will be connected to Cairne, Cenarius, Korgath, and Perenolde.
• Borean Tundra and Shadowsong will be connected to Drak’thul, Mok’Nathal, Silvermoon, and Skywall.
• Auchindoun, Cho’gall, and Laughing Skull will be connected to Elune and Gilneas.
• Burning Blade, Lightning’s Blade, and Onyxia will be connected to Garona, Icecrown, and Malygos.
• Eredar, Gorefiend, Spinebreaker, and Wildhammer will be connected to Hellscream and Zangarmarsh.

During a scheduled maintenance period planned for 3:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. AEST on September 11, the following realm connections will be made:

• Gundrak and Jubei’Thos will be connected to Dreadmaul, Frostmourne, and Thaurissan.

We are planning more realm connections for low-population realms, and ...