World of Warcraft Dev Tracker

Today, several members of the WoW Community Council met with World of Warcraft designers Morgan Day, Matt Villers, and Andrew De Sousa.

The discussion covered many topics related to the development of Mythic+ Dungeons, especially in Dragonflight going from Season 1 to Season 2, thoughts about players’ experiences with affixes, and how the Encounters team approaches making improvements to the system.

Please feel free to use this thread for any follow-up questions or discussion that you might have.

Thank you!

Hello everyone! Here are the changes in today’s PTR update:

CLASSES

• DEMON HUNTER
  • Havoc
    • Serrated Glaive now causes enemies hit by Throw Glaive to take 20% increased damage from Chaos Strike, in addition to its current effect.
    • Accelerating Blade has been renamed to Accelerated Blade.
    • Accelerated Blade now causes Throw Glaive to deal 60% increased damage (was 20%) and its damage is reduced by 30% for each previous enemy hit.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

• Updates to many non-boss enemies and all 3 bosses in the Vortex Pinnacle.
• Update to improve spawn consistency for the Afflicted and Incorporeal affixes.

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

• ITEMS
  • Gladiator’s Distinction (PvP trinket 2-set bonus) now provides 300 Stamina (was 2703) and 1600 primary stat (was...

Hello raiders. The raid testing schedule has been updated for the week:

Friday, April 21

• Mythic
  • Assault of the Zaqali – 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)
  • Rashok, the Elder – 14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)
• Raid Finder
  • Wing 2: Fury of Giants – * Assault of the Zaqali, Rashok, the Elder, and the Vigilant Stewart, Zskarn
    • Start – 15:00 PDT (18:00 EDT, 00:00 CEST)
    • End – Monday, April 24 at 09:00 PDT (12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST)

Hello. Thank you for the feedback. As the Trading Post is still quite new, we’re taking in all the written feedback we can get. We’re also informed by the data we’re getting each month on which items players prefer, which activities they earn tender from, how early in the month they make their purchases, and many other points of information.

We do want to note that items will return and become available again in the future. You should feel comfortable passing on items that aren’t your first or second choice choice in a given month, knowing that you’ll see them again. We’re focused on making a system that has a long term impact.

We will continue to carefully examine the Trading Post, and discuss everything about it, and make changes when necessary. We don’t have anything along those lines to share at the moment.

Thank you.

Hey all! Here are today’s hotfixes.

April 18, 2023

Classes

• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Fixed an issue where Immutable Hatred would persist while untalented.

Hello everyone! Here are this week’s updates to the Embers of Neltharion PTR:

CLASSES

• Developers’ note: We’ve decided to increase both player stamina and enemy damage by 25% in Embers of Neltharion. This is very much like an adjustment that was made just before the launch of Dragonflight, and it’s for the same reasons.
  
  When damage mitigation abilities and healing are too strong relative to player health, the only way to threaten players is to make enemy damage very high and spiky. If healers can very quickly top off their teammates and mana isn’t a limiting factor, enemies have to be tuned to have the capacity to do burst damage that kills players before healers can react. That isn’t very satisfying gameplay. Increasing player health gives players more time to react to incoming damage, and it makes players’ choices about cooldowns and mana management more meaningful.
  
  Along with this change, you’...

We’ve decided to increase both player stamina and enemy damage by 25% in Embers of Neltharion. This is very much like an adjustment that was made just before the launch of Dragonflight, and it’s for the same reasons.

• When damage mitigation abilities and healing are too strong relative to player health, the only way to threaten players is to make enemy damage very high and spiky. If healers can very quickly top off their teammates and mana isn’t a limiting factor, enemies have to be tuned to have the capacity to do burst damage that kills players before healers can react. That isn’t very satisfying gameplay. Increasing player health and tuning enemy ability damage appropriately gives players more time to react to incoming damage, and it makes players’ choices about cooldowns and mana management more meaningful.

Along with this change, you’ll see several adjustments to hybrid healing spells, items, and enchantments, as well as percentage-based healing spells...

We’ve had many many iterations of this article over the years, whether it was the Explorer’s League News back in 2011, which was weekly, or something monthly like (...