World of Warcraft Dev Tracker

Hello mages!

We have another round of changes to all three specs showing up in the build today, and wanted to provide some more context for you.

Time Anomaly
In general, we’re happy with the gameplay around Time Anomaly. We feel the randomness it provides can create some fun (and frustrating) moments across pulls that helps to add texture to the Mage experience. An outlier here is for Frost Mage, which across all three specs has the weakest bonuses by a decent margin. We’ve changed Time Anomaly to now grant Brain Freeze instead of Fingers of Frost for Frost Mages to help increase the impact that this talent creates for that spec specifically.

For Mages who want to opt-out of the randomness of Time Anomaly, we are adding a new talent: Inspired Intellect, which will provide a flat increase to your Intellect. We’d like Inspired Intellect’s tuning to hit the expected value of Time Anomaly across a reasonable amount of pulls, and we will make ad...

This week is mostly a suite of effect tuning for Druid of the Claw. Several Druid of the Claw bonuses provided uneven value to different abilities or specs, and we’ve adjusted the bonuses granted to various abilities to give them more comparable value.

We also adjusted the defensive value that the tree gives Feral and Guardian Druids. Tank specs should generally get more defensive value than DPS specs from their shared trees so that the tree doesn’t become a lock-in choice for DPS players in hard content, and Feral Druids of the Claw were getting a lot of defensive value.

Our intention for the Empowered Shapeshifting / Wildpower Surge node is for it to offer mostly defensive value for Feral and a mix of offensive and defensive power for Guardian, with a passive and more active shapeshifting option. Wildpower Surge should offer meaningful damage for Guardians who use it regularly (as well as granting them the defensive bonuses of effects like Ursine Vigor and Wildshape ...

Below are the following changes and updates in today’s build of The War Within Alpha:

CHARACTERS

• New Human Racial: No Place Like Home – Your Hearthstone cooldown is reduced by 5 minutes and gains an additional charge. Replaces Diplomacy.

CLASSES

• DEATH KNIGHT
  • Deathbringer
    • Wave of Souls damage increased by 50%.
    • Exterminate second scythe damage increased by 50%.
  • Rider of the Apocalypse
    • Mograine’s Heart Strike damage increased by 250%.
    • Trollbane’s Obliterate damage increased by 33%.
    • Trollbane’s Obliterate cast frequency increased by 100%.
    • Nazgrim’s Scourge Strike damage increased by 100%.
    • Nazgrim’s Scourge Strike cast frequency increased by 100%.
    • Whitemane’s Death Coil damage increased by 100%.
  • San’layn
    • Inc...

Earlier today, in order to address an issue with items that can be purchased for Conquest, we sent all of the Conquest vendors on a vacation.

We’ve been working diligently to understand and fix the issue, but it has turned out to be a particularly tricky one. At this time, we don’t know how long it’s going to take to fix.

Something we do know is – we’ll probably have to do realm restarts to make the fix for this work correctly and bring the Conquest vendors back from their trip. So you can keep an eye out for scheduled realm restarts to know when we have it all sorted.

Thank you for your patience!

May 28, 2024

Cataclysm Classic

• Fixed an issue that was causing Glubtok to summon adds in Normal Deadmines.
• Fixed an issue with many guild profession achievements not tracking as expected.
• The Twin Peaks battleground is temporarily unavailable while some issues are addressed.
• Death Knight
  • Fixed an issue with Desecration not being removed by Bladestorm.
• Druid
  • Leader of the Pack’s tooltip now correctly states that the Druid’s melee critical strikes in Cat and Bear for cause them to heal 4% of their total health (incorrectly showed 5%).
• Hunter
  • Primate Hunter pets now understand that they can’t move while using their Bad Manner ability and will successfully cast the spell without interrupting themselves.
  • Furious Howl will no longer stack with other % Crit chance increases such a...

May 28, 2024

Player versus Player

• Priest
  • Thoughtsteal can no longer be canceled.
  • Thoughtsteal no longer causes the casting Priest to learn a spell they already know (example: a Shadow Priest stealing Vampiric Touch from another Shadow Priest). The target of the Thoughtsteal still loses access to the stolen ability.
  • Developers’ notes: These changes resolve an issue where Priests could lose access to existing abilities after casting Thoughtsteal.

Quests

• Verdisa did not realize she was sitting on an important location for the quest “Forget Her Not” and has moved a few feet away.

WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria

• On Friday, May 24, the following changes were deployed:
  • There are now three new quests that grant Bronze to player-characters upon reaching levels 50, 60, and 70.
  ...

We’re working on a hotfix for this. We’re going to double Honor rewards from completing a random battleground or a holiday battleground.

We’re working on this. We agree that it would feel better to have this reward for reaching exalted with Therazane available to your alts.

We’re working on a fix for this.

Please hold onto your Tusks. You will not have to re-earn all those bones on a plate-wearing character.

With hotfixes that are now live, we’ve updated many items that drop in Sunken Temple to be better for casters and more rewarding in general.

A number of previously non-Epic items are now Epic quality, and in many cases, stats have been added or increased.

Realm restarts this morning included fixes for this issue.

We’ve been looking for any feedback players who experienced it may have, following restarts.

We have been monitoring the impact of the Gulp Frog farming that some players did during the first three days of WoW Remix. We’ve also been working on ways to respond to player feedback about Bronze acquisition, increased difficulty at higher levels, and feeling too far behind those who took advantage of the frogs.

A small number of players received an extreme advantage that has distorted the gameplay experience for some in WoW Remix. With hotfixes later today, May 24, we will adjust characters with an unreasonably large number of Gulp Frog kills prior to the loot bug fix, and those players will see the power of their Cloak of Infinite Potential reduced to an amount that a very engaged player could reasonably achieve. This change will have a larger impact on players who took advantage of the situation for longer.

For everyone that did not take advantage of the frog farming, we’re providing three additional quests with large Bronze rewards for reaching levels 50, 60, an...

May 23, 2024

Cataclysm Classic

• Fixed an issue where boosted characters were not properly learning their class and spec’s Armor Proficiency.
• Fixed a bug with achievement completion tracking for the meta-achievement Classic Dungeonmaster.
• Death Knight Brutal Gladiator gear on the Outland Armor Quartermasters in Stormwind and Orgrimmar has been discounted so that their prices match those of other classes.
• Mor’norokk the Hateful can no longer be erroneously killed by players on the quest “On Second Thought, Take One Prisoner”.
• Fixed an issue that was removing the Dormus’ Rage aura from players who were teleported to Feralas.

May 23, 2024

WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria

• Normal scenarios, Normal dungeons, Heroic scenarios, Heroic dungeons, and daily Infinite Bazaar quests now award a Cache containing 5x as much Bronze as before.
  • Developers’ notes: We intend for players to earn more Bronze as you level up, so you can more easily start purchasing upgrades and rewards. At level 70, these caches now award 8750 Bronze (this was previously 1750 Bronze).
• Fixed an issue where the Celestial Court bosses on the Timeless Isle would occasionally despawn.
• Fixed a bug affecting the scaling of certain Tinker gems.
• Putrid Waste enemies in Throne of Thunder no longer deal extreme amounts of Putrify damage.
• Brewmaster Blanche now queues you for A Brewing Storm when asked.
• The Paragon of the Mists title is now account wide.

Alpha realms are again open for testing.

Today at about 4:00 p.m. PDT (7:00 p.m. EDT), we will take Alpha realms down for maintenance. We do not currently know how long this maintenance period will last.

Thank you for your patience.

May 22, 2024

Cataclysm Classic

• Fixed a bug preventing Diabolical Plans from dropping in Ashenvale for Horde players wanting to do “Never Again”.
• Cataclysm Honor Vendors should now be available in Stormwind and Orgrimmar to purchase ilvl 352 Blue PvP Gear for Honor Points.
  • Conquest and Elite Conquest vendors will not sell anything until Arena Season 9 begins with next week’s regional resets.
• Fixed a bug with the Thirty Tabards
• Fixed a bug preventing Engineers and Alchemists from making discoveries while crafting.
• Crafted “Vicious” gear that was unintentionally created at item level 377 has been adjusted to item level 339.
• In “Stonefather’s Boon”, the Stonefather’s Boon buff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds (was 3 minutes).
• Fixed some quest issues. Erunak Stonespeaker should now still be visible to players who have advanced further in the qu...