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By Staff
The new War Within Allied Races was added to the Alpha today and we already have a full look at not only all their customization options, but their dances as well, courtesy of MrGM! You can check out the Earthen's racial abilities here if you missed them earlier.
Let's start with the more dynamic feature, with both male and female dances:
And then there's big amount of customization options, as well as a size comparison with regular dwarves:
So, are we liking the new Allied Race overall? More than actual dwarves?
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By Staff
Here's a really cool possibility for the War Within, as a very subtle and mildly mysterious comment from Executive Producer and Vice President for WoW, Holly Longdale, may be hinting at our Warband characters getting a lot more involved in our travels!
First spotted by UlthansWrath, Longdale came up to Taliesin & Evitel at the recent London War Within Alpha press event and had a short chat about the Warband screen, when she casually said "wouldn't it be cool if those were the characters you took as your followers in your Follower Dungeons?" After the obvious confirmation from Taliesin and Evitel that, yes, yes it would be cool, she just said "hm" and that was the end of the conversation.
Obviously this isn't any sort of official confirmation, but considering this is a really awesome idea, it seems likely Blizzard are at the very least discussing it, if not already working on it.
The Warband system is already great, and this would add a lot to it for players that choose to go solo into dungeons, as it would give them even more motivation to get some great characters in their Warband - even if it was just a cosmetic option.
So, what do you think, will we be seeing this feature when the War Within launches?
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By Starym
We have quite a few Season 4 fixes today, with the LFR item level requirement, many item-related fixes, as well as some Season of Discovery improvements, and more!
April 25 (Source)
Classes
Fixed a bug with damage dealt by Rip and Tear, Internal Combustion, and Tear Open Wounds in Awakened raids. Dungeons and Raids
Raid Finder now required item level 463 if the raid is Awakened. Brackenhide Hollow Addressed an issue where Stinkbreath can turn while casting Stinkbreath. Addressed an issue where Wilted Oak’s Necrotic Breath visual can be out of sync with the creature’s facing. Items
Veteran track items or items obtained from Awakened Outdoor Activities should now properly be able to be converted into Class Set items at the Revival Catalyst. Resolved multiple issues with Dragonflight Season 4 tier set items not functioning after equipping certain Season 3 set items. Dreambound gear caches from the Dreamsurge Coalesence vendor will now correctly award Season 4 Explorer 1/8 (item level 454 gear) and tokens will properly display the correct item level of its contents. Fixed an issue that prevented Tiered Medallion Setting from functioning on Season 4 necklaces. Fixed an issue preventing Season 4 crests from properly converting to their lower-tier currency. Quests
“A Multi-Front Battle” can now be completed. Season of Discovery
Using an Unconscious Dig Rat no longer dismisses pets. Mage Displacement no longer functions if the most recent use of Blink was on a different continent or in a different instance. -
By Staff
Affliction is getting plenty of changes today as well, with Blizzard detailing the reasoning behind certain choices.
Affliction (Source)
Greetings Warlocks,
Today, we have various Core and Affliction tree changes hitting the Alpha. We want to take a moment to go a bit more in depth as to what certain changes were made and why. As a refresher, here are the goals for our Core and Afflictions that we posted last week along with some additional goals that we can dig into here.
Class
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
Address the tuning of Malefic Rapture in single-target and multi-target situations. Reduce complexity and the amount of active buttons that contribute to it. Erase the need to choose between a single-target or multi-target profile by adding more adaptability and flexibility. While we cannot go over every change here, we’d like to get a bit more detailed than last week’s update and explain some of the bigger changes coming in this build.
Class Tree Throughput
We’re removing a lot of throughput talents from the class tree to allow warlocks to pick up more utility without feeling forced to take mandatory talents to be competitive. These talents aren’t compelling options when placed against utility as they will always be the right answer to have. This allows us to move that power into the specialization trees and tailor throughput-centric talents to be specific to that specialization’s gameplay.
Malefic Rapture
In addition to becoming baseline for Affliction, we are introducing new talents that will help Malefic Rapture become the go-to spender for both single-target and multi-target situations. This should also shift Seed of Corruption to being a means to apply Corruption to multiple targets rather than what you spam in dungeons. In addition, we are redesigning Siphon Life to be friendlier to Affliction’s rotation and expect that its new design will make it easier to optimize Malefic Rapture.
Affliction’s Adaptability
While we do want Affliction warlocks to have a preferred talent setup for single- versus multi-target situations, we don’t want it to feel like they are powerless if they are in the opposite situation. By focusing on Malefic Rapture being Affliction’s main spender and removing talents that are only valuable in multi-target situations (Soul Flame, Soul Swap, Doom Blossom, etc.), we’re hoping that the Affliction tree feels less punishing to fill out.
Is This It?
Not at all. We expect to make changes based on feedback and our own playtesting. We want to get the ball rolling on changes we knew we want to make, so we could start the discussion early on and make adjustments before The War Within launches.
Thank you all for the continued discussions and we look forward to your feedback!
And here are the full changes from the development notes:
Affliction (Source)
Affliction Malefic Rapture is now baseline and has been removed from the Affliction tree. Unstable Affliction has been moved to row 1. Writhe in Agony has been moved to row 2. Absolute Corruption and Siphon Life have been moved to row 3. New Talent: Cunning Cruelty - Malefic Rapture has a chance to trigger a Shadow Bolt Volley, dealing damage to 5 enemies within 10 yards of your current target. New Talent: Summoner’s Embrace – Increases the damage dealt by your spells and your demon by 3%. New Talent: Death’s Embrace – Increases Drain Life healing by 30% while your health is at or below 35% health. Damage done by your Agony, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and Malefic Rapture is increased by 5% when your target is at or below 20% health. New Talent: Relinquished - Agony has 1.25 times the normal chance to generate a Soul Shard. New Talent: Improved Shadow Bolt - The cast time of Shadow Bolt is reduced by 15% and Shadow Bolt deals 20% increased damage. New Talent: Volatile Agony - Refreshing Agony with less than 10 seconds remaining deals Shadow damage to its target and enemies within 10 yards. New Talent: Summoner’s Embrace - Increases the damage dealt or life drained by your Shadow spells and your demon by 3%. New Talent: Malediction - The periodic critical strike chance of Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction is increased by 10%. New Talent: Contagion - Critical strike damage dealt by Agony, Corruption, and Unstable Affliction is increased by 20%. New Talent: Cull the Weak - Malefic Rapture deals 5% increased damage for each enemy it hits. New Talent: Empowered Unstable Affliction - Reduces the cast time of Unstable Affliction by 10/20% and damage dealt by Unstable Affliction has a 5/10% chance to generate a Soul Shard. New Talent: Oblivion - Unleash wicked magic upon your target’s soul, dealing Shadow damage over 3 sec. Deals 10% increased damage, up to 30%, per damage over time effect you have active on the target. Costs 2 Soul Shards. 45 sec cooldown. Siphon Life has been redesigned - Corruption deals 20% increased damage and heals you for 5% of the damage dealt. Kindled Malice has been redesigned - Malefic Rapture damage increased by 4/8%. Corruption damage increased by 10/20%. Malevolent Visionary has been redesigned – Increases the damage of your Darkglare by 70%. When Darkglare extends damage over time effects it also sears the target for Shadow damage. Shadow Embrace has been redesigned - [Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul] apply Shadow Embrace, increasing your damage dealt to the target by [4.0%/2.0%] for 16 sec. Stacks up to [2/4] times. Pandemic Invocation has been removed. Sow the Seeds has been removed. Soul Swap has been removed. Doom Blossom has been removed. Dread Touch has been removed. Soul Flame has been removed. Agonizing Corruption has been removed. Seized Vitality has been removed. Soul-Eater’s Gluttony has been removed. Grand Warlock’s Design has been removed. Grim Reach has been removed. Xavius’ Gambit has been moved to row 6. Withering Bolt has been moved to row 8. Shadow Embrace has been moved to row 7. Inevitable Demise has been moved to row 6. Tormented Crescendo has been moved to row 7. Sacrolash’s Dark Strike has been moved to row 5. Grimoire of Sacrifice has been moved to column 4. Creeping Death has been moved to column 3. Dark Virtuosity has been moved to column 1. Malevolent Visionary has been moved to row 10. Summon Darkglare has been moved to row 9. -
By Staff
Here come this week's Windwalker changes as well, with Blizzard detailing adjustments to Tiger Palm and Combo Strikes, as well as announcing talent tree layout changes coming with next week's build.
Monk (Source)
This week’s Alpha build brings more updates to Windwalker and we’d like to go over the underlying philosophy and reasoning for these changes. The main changes we’ll be discussing are to Tiger Palm and its damage distribution, making Combo Strikes more consistent and intuitive, and some incoming shifts to their spec tree talent layout.
Tiger Palm
Tiger Palm is the most commonly used button for Windwalker, but historically it has represented very little overall damage itself. We want Tiger Palm to remain mostly about generating Chi, but also represent a more meaningful percentage of Windwalker’s damage breakdown. Our goal is not to change rotational priorities, but to make every button press feel directlymeaningful to your overall damage.
This also helps us tackle some interesting damage profiles by increasing their priority target damage, even in AoE scenarios. We’re excited about talents like Martial Mixture for this reason, which could offer some additional support to this profile.
Combo Strikes
We’ve removed Chi Wave and Expel Harm from the list of spells that trigger Combo Strikes for Windwalker Monks in The War Within. Since these are now automatically triggered, we didn’t think it was intuitive for these to trigger Mastery. Our intent for Combo Strikes is that the main focus should be directly on the action bar and relying on direct spell casts rather than auras to determine your next spell to cast.
Alongside this, we’re making a couple adjustments to Combat Wisdom and Storm, Earth, and Fire to support these changes.
Combat Wisdom will now rebalance Chi to 2 while out of combat instead of the default depletion. We think this will help both Windwalker’s opener feel more intuitive (only one required Tiger Palm before entering cooldowns with max Chi when playing with Ordered Elements) and also improve the experience of traveling between packs in Mythic Plus or the open world.
Storm, Earth, and Fire is being added to the list of spells that triggers Combo Strikes. Our goal here is to make the transition to bursting feel as smooth as possible – both when maximizing Rising Sun Kicks with Ordered Elements and in the cases a Windwalker may choose to Storm, Earth, and Fire immediately before using other globals to set up Combo Strikes.
Windwalker Tree Talent Layout Adjustments
In next week’s Alpha build, we’re repositioning some nodes in the Windwalker tree to free up some builds we’re excited about. The main change is moving Teachings of the Monastery to Flying Serpent Kick’s location and moving Flying Serpent Kick baseline. Teachings of the Monastery is a talent we’re now considering core to the spec’s design in all scenarios, and moving it to a more centralized location frees up a talent point to increase optionality elsewhere.
Thank you very much for your testing and feedback!
And the changes from the development notes:
Windwalker (Source)
Developers’ notes: Please note that not all of the below changes will be available in Public Alpha 2, but we want to give players a full picture our next planned update for Windwalker, so we’ve opted to include all of our changes.
Windwalker Expel Harm no longer triggers combo strikes. Chi Wave no longer triggers combo strikes. Combat Wisdom now balances your Chi to 2 while out of combat. Developers’ notes: With the removal of Expel Harm from the list of combo strikes triggers, we’d like to naturally smooth out Windwalker’s opener by having them start each combat with some additional Chi. This also reduces the ramp-up steps for them to get going rotationally. Storm, Earth, and Fire now triggers Combo Strikes. Developers’ notes: Moving forward, we’d like for Combo Strikes to not trigger from spells that aren’t intuitive to mix into your rotation or aren’t directly under your control, such as Flying Serpent Kick and Chi Wave / Expel Harm procs. Along this line of thinking, we’re also adding Storm, Earth and Fire to the list of spells that can trigger Combo Strikes. We want the initiation of cooldowns to feel as smooth as possible, and we’d like to allow for Ordered Elements to feel easier to play around (also back to back Rising Sun Kicks are fun!). Ordered Elements now has a 7 sec duration (was 5). Jadefire Harmony now increases damage and healing taken by 8% for its duration (was 12%). Crane Vortex is now a 1 point talent and increases the radius of Spinning Crane Kick by 15%. Rising Star is now a 1 point talent. Vivify healing increased by 30% for Windwalker. Developers’ notes: With the removal of Expel Harm as an active button for Windwalker, we’d like Vivify to better fill the on-demand healing niche for them. Skytouch no longer increases the range of Tiger Palm, now increases critical strike chance by 15% (was 50%), and its lockout duration is 30 sec (was 60). Dance of Chi-Ji may now stack up to 2 times. Storm, Earth, and Fire clones will now copy your Tiger’s Lust casts. Developers’ notes: With the removal of Serenity in mind, we’re looking to open up counter play options for Windwalkers when their Storm, Earth, and Fire clones are crowd controlled in PvP. Flying Serpent Kick is now a 30 sec cooldown (was 20). Shadowboxing Tread’s extra Blackout Kicks are now 80% effective (was 100%). Developers’ notes: We’re adding a tuning knob to Shadowboxing Treads so we can more easily tune Blackout Kick’s damage between single target and AoE scenarios.
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