World of Warcraft Dev Tracker

Hello mages!

We have some updates coming to the Alpha in the next few weeks and want to give you an early look at a significant talent shakeup.

These changes will be almost exclusively specialization tree changes, but the goals are similar across them all. In general, we’re happy with the core gameplay of each mage specialization. These changes aim to elevate existing gameplay, provide choice, and ease frustration.

Goals

• Allow you to acquire each specialization’s core gameplay with less talent point investment.
• Simplify rotational complexity.
• Provide tools to help you adapt your damage profile to better match a given encounter.
• Provide competitive choice nodes that let you opt-out of complex gameplay.

Mage Class Tree

So far there is one change in the Mage class tree:

• Temporal Warp is being removed.

Temporal Warp has some experiential issues w...

Greetings Warlocks,

We’ve been very excited to see the community’s reactions to the Warlock Hero Talents, and we appreciate all of your feedback.

In the coming weeks, you’ll see multiple changes to the Warlock class and specialization trees, and we’d like to provide some context for these changes here.

Core Goals

• Ensure each capstone is interesting and exciting.
• Reduce the amount of throughput talents, to free up utility choices.
• Reduce the number of ranks for talents that don’t warrant multiple ranks.

Affliction
The Affliction specialization tree forces a choice between a single-target or multi-target profile rather than providing a viable build that is adaptable in both situations. We want to redesign, introduce, and remove talents, as well as address the tuning of Malefic Rapture to help reduce this friction.

Demonology
For Demonology, we want to a...

Hello Death Knights,

We wanted to take a moment to let you know that we are planning some updates for the Death Knight talent trees going into The War Within. While we’re still a few builds away from deploying the changes to the War Within Alpha, we’d like to outline some our goals with the changes, to give a better idea of what to expect.

DK Goals

• Reduce the amount of resource flooding that affects each spec to varying degrees,
• Reduce the throughput nodes toward the end of the tree. It currently has 9 such nodes that add a lot of tension and make it hard to flex into utility you’d otherwise like to take. While we don’t plan to outright cut the DPS throughput nodes, we will rather make them easier to pick up as you naturally progress ...

EVOKER

• Evokers now start at level 10 (was level 58).
• Evokers now unlock the talent pane immediately after choosing a specialization in the Forbidden Reach, and they no longer learn “temporary” talents as they complete the Forbidden Reach experience.
• Several base spells that were previously learned at level 58 are now learned at level 10.
• Mass Return is now learned at level 38.
• Fury of the Aspects is now learned at level 48.

Devastation

Devastation Evoker can generate very high threat at the start of a pull due to a combination of their Mastery: Giantkiller and the burstiness of spells like Fire Breath and Pyre (particularly when used with Dragonrage and Charged Blast). A...

Greetings members of the Artisan’s Consortium!

As we reveal much of the content coming in The War Within, we’d like discuss a new system we’re cooking up for professions.

Inspiration

We added Inspiration in Dragonflight to try and capture the fantasy of critical hits while crafting. If you weren’t quite capped out on your gear and specializations for a given craft, or if you weren’t using max quality reagents to guarantee that max quality item, Inspiration was a way to get that lucky crit. It could save you some money (by using lower-quality reagents) and you could craft a better item than you would otherwise.

That was the hope at least, but it ended up (understandably) becoming a situation where crafters take this luck-based system, te...

The War Within Alpha Development Notes

NEW ZONES AND DELVES

• Isle of Dorn
• The Ringing Deeps
• Hallowfall
• Azj-Kahet

NEW DUNGEONS

• Cinderbrew Meadery
• The Rookery
• The Stonevault
• Darkflame Cleft
• The Dawnbreaker
• Priory of the Sacred Flame
• City of Threads
• Ara-Kara, City of Echoes

NEW ALLIED RACE: EARTHEN (Earthen Race Feedback)

• Within the Halls of Awakening, the future of the earthen flickers with hope once ...

We greatly appreciate your feedback and we’re looking forward to your thoughts on Druid changes. There are a few topics we’re especially interested in hearing from you on:

• How does it feel to build characters for different types of content? Do you feel you are able to get the tools you need?
• How do the changes help or not help in specific situations that are relevant to you?
• Are there sections of the talent trees that you feel don’t have enough meaningful choices?
• Do you see any degenerate or unintended impacts on rotations, including:
  • Using single target abilities in AOE or vice versa.
  • Being flooded with resources faster than they can be spent.
  • Feeling forced to use (or never use) particular abilities due to how the class is played.

Overall, our goal is to provide interesting choices and options in talent trees that deliver the fantasies of druid and its specializations, including appropria...

Holy Paladin

Our goals are to replace Light of the Martyr with a passive spell but keep the same thematic sacrifice theme, move more of their throughput from Beacon of Light into their baseline spells, and redesign Blessing of Summer to feel more specific to their role.

Blessing of Summer will now work as an external buff that converts healing to damage or damage to healing ability depending on which specialization you place it on. We’re hoping this offers a dynamic and more interesting way to use the spell. This effect will have a slight cap in order to allow us to tune it between AoE and single target scenarios, similar to Ancestral Guidance.

Beacon of Light represents a very large amount of throughput and we’d like to move more of that bu...

Mistweaver Monk

Mistweaver is seeing a few updates including their class 2-set Chi Harmony bonus and the removal of Essence Font. We’re also adding a talent to help Mistweavers who are focused on melee to gain more value out of their Mastery stat. Essence Font’s removal will have a few outcomes, the most important of which to address will be melee Mistweavers in raid healing scenarios.

We’re hoping the removal of Clouded Focus and consequent tuning of Vivify and Enveloping Mist will help Soothing Mist fill the gaps for them, but there are some realities around planting and casting that may feel worse than Essence Font did. Our goal here is to make the risk/reward feel worth it here through tuning, but we’re going to continue looking at this a...

Windwalker Monk

Our updates for Windwalker in The War Within are intended to address a few issues the specialization struggled with throughout Dragonflight. These points of focus for us were the power levels of the Haste and Mastery stats falling behind other options, Jadefire Stomp’s usability, and the Touch of Death gameplay focus. Other areas that we are also looking at are resource bloat, evening out their rate of auto-attacks, and adding more pronounced thematics through both gameplay and visuals.

Fists of Fury’s damage and Glory of the Dawn now scale with your Haste value to help the stat be more impactful for Windwalker Monks. These will help us have the tuning knobs to increase its value more dynamically. We’ve also increased the cost...

Monk Class Tree

Our main goals for the Monk Class tree are to introduce more optionality, refresh the cappers, and add a few new pieces of utility (such as an Enrage dispel), while still cutting down on overall keybind requirements. To accomplish this, we’ve added choice nodes to most active options that offer a passive option or changed pathing to allow more skipping of these spells.

We’ve also cut down on the total amount of throughput being offered within the core tree. Using Mistweaver as an example, they often found themselves feeling required to pick up both the healing and damage nodes offered throughout the tree and were therefore left with only a few points to customize their utility loadout. The reduced number of throughput nodes an...

Fury Warrior

We feel that Fury is in a good place in terms of fantasy and talents, but the Fury tree in Dragonflight went beyond what we are happy with in terms of overspecialization. Season by season in Dragonflight, Fury’s builds and rotation changed dramatically, often to the point of excluding one or more abilities and talents related to those abilities. We’ve made some adjustments to the Fury tree to address the extremes while retaining a large amount of the build diversity that Fury Warriors have come to enjoy.

...

Arms Warrior

Overall, we think that the Arms fantasy, abilities, and talents are in a good place, but a few talents and the abundance of Rage in Dragonflight strongly affected rotations and locked in builds with very little variation. Our goals for Arms in The War Within are to restore Arms Warriors’ tactical relationship with Rage generation and spending and provide more choices in your talent builds.

Arms was the spec most impacted by Rage overgeneration, as Arms’ rotation is most closely tied to availability of Rage to spend. Arms also has several talents that interact with Rage spend (Tactician, Anger Management, and Test of Might), and over-generation of Rage turns talents like Storm of Swords and Barbaric Training from being trade-offs or opt...

Warrior Class Tree

Our main goals for the warrior class tree are to increase build options and diversity as well as improve access to important warrior utility abilities. Berserker Rage is now baseline, learned automatically by all Warriors at level 12. Shockwave has been moved from the bottom of the tree to the middle to position it as a core Warrior utility ability. The rest of the tree has been rearranged with more connectors and a choice of active and passive abilities in each section, with damage and disruption-focused abilities on the left and survival and utility abilities on the right of the tree.

...

Restoration Druid

In The War Within, we’d like to reduce active keybinds, increase the base power of Rejuvenation, and offer some new Heart of the Wild gameplay.

We experimented with a passive design for Adaptive Swarm, but ultimately feel reducing both the keybind requirements and party frame clutter is worth replacing it with a new effect. Restoration Druid reached a point in Dragonflight where we felt there were one too many heal over time effects within the talent tree that affect both the tuning of Mastery and the space on friendly unit frames.

Luxuriant Soil also had our eye throughout Dragonflight and in part has led to Rejuvenation at a baseline level feeling rather unimpactful and leaving Restoration Druids not having as m...

Feral Druid

Our top goals for Feral Druid in The War Within are to slow down its rotation a little to make Energy usage more tactical and to bring more clarity to playing the spec. We’re also trying to restore more of Tiger Fury’s identity and excitement, and simplifying some talent functionality to free up more choice in where you spend points. Many of these changes will read as nerfs – the goal is to build a healthy rotation and talent balance and buff damage to make that rotation competitive.

Energy Ge...

Balance Druid

Our top goals for Balance Druid in The War Within are to ease some of the constraints on their rotation, open up a greater variety of builds and play styles, and tune their balance and resource generation.

Primordial Arcanic Pulsar Removed

Pulsar is an undeniably powerful effect, granting a strong damage buff and triggering Eclipse effects. However, it’s extremely constraining, reducing the value of any effects that don’t align with its 40-45 second cadence. Plus,...

There are updates to the druid class tree and several specs trees coming in the War Within. We’re excited for you to play with them in the Alpha, and we’d like to share some of the design and class philosophy behind the updates.

Druid Class Tree

A core aspect of the druid fantasy is that they have 4 specializations with a variety of magical and physical powers. We want the class tree to embody druids’ ability to invest in the powers of other specializations for useful utility and defensive power. We kept the central design of there being four main sections, one for each spec. You can invest in the Guardian section to access their powerful damage resistance, or the Restoration section to unlock self-healing. Further, the talents in the botto...

Retribution Paladin

Hello Champions of the Light!

In The War Within, we have several updates to Retribution that we’re excited for you to test in the Alpha, and we’d like to highlight some of our goals and philosophy here.

Secondary Stat Scaling

Our initial goal is to explore how we can make secondary stats more appealing to Retribution, to allow a natural progression of scaling throughout an expansion. Due to the nature of many talents offering guaranteed critical hits, it was di...