VuhDo: a Comprehensive Guide
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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. -
By Staff
Blizzard have detailed the changes coming to Fire Mages in this War Within build, as we as their intentions behind them. There are many talent tree changes, with new talents aimed at more choices being available, especially in the AoE department.
Fire (Source)
Hello Mages!
We have a lot of Fire Mage changes hitting the Alpha today, and we want to take some time to go over what changes were made and why. As mentioned in our update post last week, we have a few goals that span all mage specializations. These are:
Allow you to acquire each specialization’s core gameplay with less talent point investment. Simplify rotational complexity. Provide new nodes that can help you adapt your damage profile to better match a given encounter’s demands. Provide competitive choice nodes that let you opt-out of complex gameplay. Since we’re talking about Fire only, we can get a bit more granular:
Fire’s AOE
The biggest issue we were looking to address with this iteration was giving you more ways to adjust your talents and rotation to better suit different profiles, which goes hand-in-hand with increasing the effectiveness and excitement of Flamestrike, Phoenix Flames, and Living Bomb. We’re excited to see what Fire Mages can cook up with the new talents. Our goal with these changes is to push Ignite-spreading out of the default playstyle in higher forms of content, especially above 3 targets-- but retain and add talent support for it so its still exciting to utilize when it makes sense.
Sun King’s Blessing
Sun King’s Blessing is a powerful and exciting capstone that Fire Mage players have been utilizing heavily for quite a while. We like the Sun King’s Blessing / Unleashed Inferno capstone choice node, but recognize that Unleashed Inferno still has some gaps to close, particularly in AOE.
By increasing the stack requirement of Sun King’s Blessing to 10 and increasing Unleashed Inferno’s effectiveness in AOE, we’re hoping that the two talents can better coexist as a meaningful choice when going into an encounter.
Maintenance Buffs
Fire’s array of maintenance buffs has been a sore spot in Dragonflight, and its something we’re looking to address moving forward-- especially given the addition of the Aberrus tier set as talents in the Fire tree.
Firemind is our first removal, but we’re also being sensitive to the fact that Firemind didn’t require you to play around it very much, so its removal might not be doing much to simplify the landscape of Fire’s maintenance buffs.
We’re also simplifying Improved Scorch’s damage amplification effect to be less punishing when its dropped, but also allowing it to be opt-in complexity. Fire Mages who want increased execute damage without the addition of another maintenance buff should look towards Down in Flames, a new choice node against Improved Scorch.
Feel the Burn is on our radar, but its output is impactful enough that it serves as a great way to express skill for Fire Mages who have mastered its gameplay. New talents along with effects from the Frostfire and Sunfury trees are increasing player’s access to Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames, so keeping Feel the Burn up should be easier than ever before.
That’s all for this update. We’re excited to read all of your feedback on the new Fire talents!
And here are the specific changes from the development notes:
Fire (Source)
Fire Fuel the Fire is now baseline New Talent - Lit Fuse: Consuming Hot Streak has a small chance to grant Lit Fuse. Lit Fuse makes your next Phoenix Flames apply Living Bomb to up to three targets. Living Bomb explodes after 2 sec, dealing damage to the target and up to 5 nearby enemies. Up to 5 enemies hit by this explosion gain Living Bomb, but this effect cannot spread further. New Talent - Explosive Ingenuity: Consuming Hot Streak has a higher chance of granting you Lit Fuse. Living Bomb damage increased by 50%. New Talent - Down in Flames (Choice node with Improved Scorch): Scorch deals 300% damage to targets below 30% health. New Talent - Quickflame (Choice node with Flame Patch): Flamestrike damage increased by 25%. New Talent - Focused Fury: Living Bomb deals more damage the fewer targets it hits, up to 300% at 1 target. New Talent - Mark of the Fire Lord: Flamestrike and Living Bomb apply Mastery: Ignite at 100% increased effectiveness. New Talent - Spontaneous Combustion (Choice node with Improved Combustion): Casting Combustion refreshes up to 3 charges of Fire Blast and up to 3 charges of Phoenix Flames. New Talent - Charring Embers: Phoenix Flames applies Charring Embers to all enemies it damages, increasing their damage taken from you by 5% for 12 sec. New Talent - Fire’s Ire: When you’re not under the effect of Combustion, your critical strike chance is increased by 2.5%. When you’re under the effects of Combustion, your critical strike damage is increased by 2.5%. Two-rank talent. New Talent - Explosivo: Casting Combustion grants Lit Fuse. While under the effects of Combustion, consuming Hot Streak has a substantially increased chance to grant you Lit Fuse. New Talent - Blast Zone: Lit Fuse can now apply Living Bomb to up to five targets. Living Bombs can now spread to eight enemies. New Talent - Ashen Feather (Choice node with Majesty of the Phoenix): If Phoenix Flames hits only one target, it deals 50% increased damage and applies Ignite at 100% effectiveness. New Talent - Majesty of the Phoenix (Choice node with Ashen Feather): When Phoenix Flames damages 3 or more targets, your next 2 Flamestrikes have their cast time reduced by 1.5 sec and their damage is increased by 20%. Fervent Flickering has been redesigned: Now reduces the cooldown of Fire Blast by 2 sec Controlled Destruction has been redesigned: Damaging a target with Pyroblast increases the damage it receives from Ignite by 2%. This effect stacks up to 25 times. Developers’ notes: This talent is currently stacking past 25. This is not intentional and will be corrected in a future update. Improved Scorch has been redesigned: Casting Scorch on targets below 30% health increases the damage the target takes from you by 5% for 12 sec. This effect stacks up to 2 times. Flame Accelerant has been redesigned: Every 12 seconds, your next Fireball, Flamestrike, or Pyroblast has a 40% reduced cast time. Unleashed Inferno has been redesigned: While Combustion is active your Fireball, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Scorch, and Phoenix Flames deal 50% increased damage and reduce the cooldown of Combustion by 1.25 sec. While Combustion is active, Flamestrike deals 25% increased damage and reduces the cooldown of Combustion by 0.25 sec for each critical strike, up to 1.25 sec. Convection has been redesigned: When a Living Bomb expires, if it did not spread to another target, it refreshes its duration. A Living Bomb can only benefit from this effect once. Pyromaniac has been redesigned: Casting Pyroblast or Flamestrike while Hot Streak is active has an 8% chance to repeat the spell cast at 100% effectiveness, but the copied spell cannot contribute to Hot Streak. This effect counts as consuming Hot Streak. Phoenix Reborn has been redesigned: When your direct damage spells hit an enemy affected by Charring Embers 20 times, the damage of your next 2 Phoenix Flames is increased by 200% and they refund a charge on use. Call of the Sun King is now in Gate 1 Searing Touch has been removed. Searing Touch’s critical strike threshold functionality is now baseline to Scorch. Improved Scorch’s movement speed increase is now baseline to Scorch. Incendiary Eruptions, Firemind, and Tempered Flames removed. Firestarter, Intensifying Flame, Inflame, Controlled Destruction, Wild Fire, and Flame Accelerant are now in Gate 2. Flame On is now 1 point and no longer reduces the cooldown of Fire Blast. Critical Mass is now 1 point. Wildfire is now 1 point. Conflagration has been removed. Fevered Incantation is now 2 points Sun King’s Blessing now grants Sun King’s Fury after consuming 10 Hot Streaks. Hyperthermia now has an activation overlay. -
By Staff
The Earthen join the Allied Race roster in this week's War Within Alpha build! Blizzard detail their current Alpha experience, as well as their racial abilities and future plans.
Earthen (Source)
Greetings, Alpha testers!
With today’s Alpha update, testers can all rock the Earthen first hand.
First, some context.
To get right into the action, new Earthen on the Alpha bypass their starting quest experience. We also have abilities that are in the final stages of design but aren’t quite ready in terms of visuals or corner-case functionality. If you’d like a higher level experience, you can create a template character using an Earthen, but in this release, we’re particularly looking for your impressions of the extensive customization options the Earthen have to offer. Feel free to show us your awesome creations!
We’re also looking for your thoughts on the set of racial abilities we’ve imbued in our rocky friends.
Earthen’s active ability is Azerite Surge, an empower spell which has the following effects:
(We’re still working on the visuals for this spell, so expect to see changes in the near future as we refine it.)
Azerite Surge–
Draw upon your inner strength. Release to invoke the power of Azerite, dealing $s1 Fire damage. Empowering has the following effects: Stage 1: Deals Fire damage to enemies. Stage 2: Heals allies for a moderate amount. Stage 3: Deals additional Fire damage to the highest health enemy. Additionally, Earthen have four other characteristics/traits:
Ingest Minerals – You are always Well Fed, but cannot consume food. Activate Ingest Minerals to consume a gem and change the benefit granted to you by Well Fed. Hyper Productive – Increases Finesse, which increases the chances of gathering additional materials. Titan-Wrought Frame – Base armor from items is increased by a moderate amount. Wide-Eyed Wonder – When you gain experience for exploring a location, gain additional exploration experience. Please let us know what you think in this thread. Thank you!
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