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Blizzard on Pet Changes in Battle for Azeroth

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Blizzard recently provided more insight into Hunter pet changes in Battle for Azeroth.

The way how Hunter pets work in Battle for Azeroth differs from Legion. We've highlighted the most important changes in this post. Class Designer Solanis explained the rationale behind all changes:

The goal is to move past the idea of a DPS/Tank pet specialization and encourage variety.

Blizzard LogoBlizzard (Source)

As we’ve kicked off the Battle for Azeroth Alpha, we’ve seen a lot of discussion about the new way Hunter pets work. While we’re by no means finished, we have reached a place where we want to share some insight into our plans and explain some of what you might see in development as Alpha continues.

Our primary thoughts on pets going forward:

Move past the idea of a DPS/Tank pet specialization

In Battle for Azeroth, all pets will have equal damage, health, and armor. All can tank or DPS equally. Choosing to put a particular pet into “Tank spec” feels outdated, so we’re going to shift all pets to a setup that will work as though they’re specced into both Ferocity and Tenacity (in Legion terms). All offensive and defensive passive abilities such as Blood of the Rhino and Combat Training will be rolled into every pet by default. Charge will be removed, and all pets will have Growl and Dash/Swoop. Some spec-specific actives will be redistributed where appropriate. We are keeping the names Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning as the broad groups that all families fall into. They are no longer changeable, and each has a new passive and active ability that are useful in almost any situation.  

Maintain and/or reinstate pet family uniqueness

Pet family flavor is part of what makes selecting a companion unique and special, and want to emphasize that even more. A special ability has been added to all pet families that were missing one. Exotic Pets still have their unique ability (like Surface Trot) in addition to a new ability. Pure flavor abilities that many pets have are also staying like Trick and Rest.

Expanding access to Bloodlust, and the removal of Battle Res from pets

In Legion, all Hunters have access to Bloodlust and Battle Res, but they only exist among a handful of families, which leads to very narrow options. To that end, Bloodlust will be available on roughly a third of the tamable pet families rather than just two. In a world where we are proliferating abilities to many families, our first inclination was to add Battle Res to a separate third of those families. After seeing that landscape, it felt odd to fully embrace Resurrection as part of the Hunter kit. Further, moving into Battle for Azeroth, we are solidifying Bloodlust and Battle Res as the strong shared cooldowns that a group can bring - one offense, one defense. In that world, Hunters having access to both of the super powerful group benefits didn’t feel appropriate. 

A variety of pet ability packages

It’s important to acknowledge that some hunters want to maximize their impact with their pet, while others are collectors who want a pet for every occasion. There should be opportunities to cleverly swap from one pet to another in a given situation and reap the benefit. At the same time, the Hunter who has grown attached to their spider named Fluffy should feel effective across the game. We’re going to try to ensure that every pet package is attractive, with a unique combination of benefits that work in many situations.

Here are some specifics of the Battle for Azeroth design for Hunter pets:

There are currently 51 pet families, and each family will be categorized as FerocityTenacity, or Cunning. Each will have an active and a passive, and the active will be a Hunter class button that changes contextually with your active pet. 

  • Ferocity
  • Tenacity
  • Cunning
    • Master's CallMaster's Call (Active – a friendly target and your pet are immune to root and moment impairing effects for 4 seconds with a 45 second cooldown)
    • PathfindingPathfinding (Passive - 8% movement speed for you and your pet)

Each pet family will get one of six different abilities, and each ability will have a unique name themed to the family. Precedented abilities such as Ankle CrackAnkle Crack - 50% SnareMonstrous BiteMonstrous Bite - Healing Reduction DebuffShell ShieldShell Shield50% Reduced Damage TakenAgile ReflexesAgile Reflexes - 30% Dodge, and Thick HideThick HideReduced Damage Taken at Low Health already exist in the game, and we’re exploring adding something similar to Tranquilizing ShotTranquilizing Shot to the list.

While this does create a landscape where there may only be a handful of families that exactly fit the combination of tools you prefer, each family was chosen with variety as a premium. There are winged creatures, predators, grazers, and more represented across as many abilities as possible, while keeping them thematically appropriate. 

For two specific examples: a Spirit Beast in Battle for Azeroth still has Spirit MendSpirit Mend and Spirit WalkSpirit Walk, and will gain Endurance TrainingEndurance Training and Survival of the FittestSurvival of the Fittest. They also have a new ability, Spirit ShockSpirit Shock, that dispels magic and soothes enraged enemies. Cats, on the other hand, gain Catlike ReflexesCatlike Reflexes – a 30% dodge cooldown – in addition to Primal RagePrimal Rage and Predator's ThirstPredator's Thirst. Both are able to tank or DPS equally.

Nowadays, only about half of the pet families out there have a useful ability, and we want to improve on that. In Battle for Azeroth, Bloodlust will be much more prominent, so Hunters should no longer feel bound to Core Hounds and Nether Rays as their best options. Most importantly, these changes should result in a pet landscape where all pets can serve as dps or tank as well as they could in Legion.

Please remember that all of the above, especially the numbers, are subject to change as we test in the Battle for Azeroth Alpha. Feel free to discuss anything related to Hunter pets here. We really appreciate your feedback!

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cool, now i have way more pets i can pick from, before i was literally stuck with 4 choices, the stone cat/crane and nether ray/corehound.  now i gots a whole family to pick from for each spec :D

also solved the issue where sometimes,  one defensive cooldown just isnt enough. 

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I still can't understand why we lose the ability to change our pet's specialization, especially with the removal of BRez from any and all pets. I would be in agreement with these changes and I do like the idea of making pet families feel unique but I just don't see why we are limited to what spec we can have our pet be in. I want to play as my Dwarf Hunter with the pet bear, I don't want to have to pull out X family pet to gain the benefit of a Bloodlust or whatever another spec has that I need. At the end of the day it's only a cosmetic thing, if every other class can transmogrify their weapons and armor, why can't we choose what our pet looks like?

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10 minutes ago, leapingshadow said:

I still can't understand why we lose the ability to change our pet's specialization, especially with the removal of BRez from any and all pets. I would be in agreement with these changes and I do like the idea of making pet families feel unique but I just don't see why we are limited to what spec we can have our pet be in. I want to play as my Dwarf Hunter with the pet bear, I don't want to have to pull out X family pet to gain the benefit of a Bloodlust or whatever another spec has that I need. At the end of the day it's only a cosmetic thing, if every other class can transmogrify their weapons and armor, why can't we choose what our pet looks like?

That's... sort of already how it works? You can't just take any pet as is and give them bloodlust. You already need to take SPECIFIC pets for bloodlust. If you wana use a bear, use a bear. it's the same dps in raids, and chances are in raids you're going to have a mage/shaman for lust anyways.

As it stands on live, these pet "specs" don't have these abilities anyways.

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36 minutes ago, leapingshadow said:

I still can't understand why we lose the ability to change our pet's specialization, especially with the removal of BRez from any and all pets. I would be in agreement with these changes and I do like the idea of making pet families feel unique but I just don't see why we are limited to what spec we can have our pet be in. I want to play as my Dwarf Hunter with the pet bear, I don't want to have to pull out X family pet to gain the benefit of a Bloodlust or whatever another spec has that I need. At the end of the day it's only a cosmetic thing, if every other class can transmogrify their weapons and armor, why can't we choose what our pet looks like?

Let me explain about this "why can't we choose what our pet looks like"..... Blood Lust for example, was bound to Core Hound and Nether Ray, so if anyone wanted it they had to pick one of these two, which limits them to these two only. With this change, Blood Lust is there on many more other pet families which screams, variety! Specializations are becoming different than before and hold one active and passive, also, specs no more increase or decrease damage or tank capabilities. All in all, it's a terrific change.

Edited by Undeadxy
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5 minutes ago, Undeadxy said:

How can you say "why can't we choose what our pet looks like"..... Blood Lust for example, was bound to Core Hound and Nether Ray, so if anyone wanted it they had to pick one of these two, which limits them to these two only. With this change Blood Lust is there on many more other pet families which SCREAMS, VARIETY! Specializations are becoming different than before and hold one active and passive, also, specs no more increase or decrease damage or tank capabilities. All in all, it's a terrific change.

He's still correct about not being able to change specs. It really sucks for those of us who prefer a certain pet.

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8 minutes ago, Calysia said:

He's still correct about not being able to change specs. It really sucks for those of us who prefer a certain pet.

Just use the pet you want. you aren't losing dps, and you aren't losing the ability to have any pet with any ability because again, they don't currently have it. Putting your tiger in ferocity on live doesn't give it lust. Ya, different pets will have different utility, that's not different than it is on live.

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14 minutes ago, Calysia said:

He's still correct about not being able to change specs. It really sucks for those of us who prefer a certain pet.

"It really sucks for those of us who prefer a certain pet" I don't know what to say about that. But, I see it fitting this way. It's weird that, for example, a  pet which is by default Ferocity suddenly changes specialization and forgets what he knew from Ferocity, and suddenly has new set of abilities at that instant. It was illogical and stripped away the feeling of the specific pet. I know that there is a new weird thing with the change which is damage and tank capabilities are equal on all pet families, but that's so people won't get angry that they are forced more into specific pets for damage and set of abilities from specializations. With this, only thing you are forced into when choosing a pet is the specialization and to be honest it's really fine since it's only one active and one passive. Way better than the older version i'd say.

Edited by Undeadxy

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25 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

Why isn't anyone asking about the demand for more stable slots?

They are probably saving that as their ace in the hole. After they decimate the class to the point no one wants to play it, they will be like "oh, and here are 10 more slots".

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23 minutes ago, Undeadxy said:

"It really sucks for those of us who prefer a certain pet" I don't know what to say about that. But, I see it fitting this way. It's weird that, for example, a  pet which is by default Ferocity suddenly changes specialization and forgets what he knew from Ferocity, and suddenly has new set of abilities at that instant. It was illogical and stripped away the feeling of the specific pet. I know that there is a new weird thing with the change which is damage and tank capabilities are equal on all pet families, but that's so people won't get angry that they are forced more into specific pets for damage and set of abilities from specializations. With this, only thing you are forced into when choosing a pet is the specialization and to be honest it's really fine since it's only one active and one passive. Way better than the older version i'd say.

You mean like how we forget our abilities from MM when we switch to BM? I just feel Blizzard has gone too far...with no good reason...by not allowing us to swap pet specs.

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26 minutes ago, Undeadxy said:

It's weird that, for example, a  pet which is by default Ferocity suddenly changes specialization and forgets what he knew from Ferocity, and suddenly has new set of abilities at that instant. It was illogical and stripped away the feeling of the specific pet.

You can say the exact same thing about changing specs for actual classes though. Just suddenly switch to Survival and forget how to use a bow or a gun, that is more illogical than a pet changing spec.

47 minutes ago, Undeadxy said:

Let me explain about this "why can't we choose what our pet looks like"..... Blood Lust for example, was bound to Core Hound and Nether Ray, so if anyone wanted it they had to pick one of these two, which limits them to these two only. With this change, Blood Lust is there on many more other pet families which screams, variety!

That doesn't explain why we can't choose what our pet looks like, it's an improvement, but there are still more improvements that can be made.

32 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

Why isn't anyone asking about the demand for more stable slots?

My Stables are actually capped with every single rare tame in there and I would love more stable slots or some sort of rework which provides a long term solution.

30 minutes ago, Aegrotat said:

Just use the pet you want. you aren't losing dps, and you aren't losing the ability to have any pet with any ability because again, they don't currently have it. Putting your tiger in ferocity on live doesn't give it lust. Ya, different pets will have different utility, that's not different than it is on live.

Just because we're not losing anything from live to alpha doesn't mean that we can't ask for the ability to have more. The situation to me is like saying, Oh you're a Draenei Priest, but you can't be Shadow because it doesn't make sense.

Edited by leapingshadow
Spacing.

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1 minute ago, leapingshadow said:

Just because we're not losing anything from live to alpha doesn't mean that we can't ask for the ability to have more. The situation to me is like saying, Oh you're a Draenei Priest, but you can't be Shadow because it doesn't make sense.

The problem is you don't always NEED more. You're getting a bigger selection of pets for each spec, and the dps DOESN'T change. Ok ya, some pets have different fitting utility but that's... not the end of the world. I mean warlocks should be complaining because if they want more dps, they need to use one specific pet. If they want to do pvp, one pet is clearly better than the others. I guess that's why I see them giving more choice to hunters, and find it funny that hunters are complaining they still don't have enough options.

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10 minutes ago, Aegrotat said:

The problem is you don't always NEED more. You're getting a bigger selection of pets for each spec, and the dps DOESN'T change. Ok ya, some pets have different fitting utility but that's... not the end of the world. I mean warlocks should be complaining because if they want more dps, they need to use one specific pet. If they want to do pvp, one pet is clearly better than the others. I guess that's why I see them giving more choice to hunters, and find it funny that hunters are complaining they still don't have enough options.

The difference with Warlocks though, is that their pets are fundamentally different than a Hunter's. Hunter's have the rare tames and hundreds of pets to choose to tame and use. Warlock demons are more stat sticks than a Hunter is, they have like 1-2 abilities and don't have access to huge raid wide buffs like Heroism and Battle Resurrects. With Warlocks there are like 5 pets to choose from all of which you can't change the name of or really customize at all. Imagine going out of the way to go tame something like Gara to be told that oh, that random Turtle is clearly a better choice here and that you are majorly missing out if you don't use the Turtle for it's specialization ability. Yes, it's true that's how it's working at the moment, but i'm asking to remove that limitation completely, because it doesn't exist for any real important reason. 

And to add to that, Warlock pets don't have specializations.

Edited by leapingshadow
Warlock reasoning.

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The difference with Warlocks though, is that their pets are fundamentally different than a Hunter's. Hunter's have the rare tames and hundreds of pets to choose to tame and use. Warlock demons are more stat sticks than a Hunter is, they have like 1-2 abilities and don't have access to huge raid wide buffs like Heroism and Battle Resurrects. With Warlocks there are like 5 pets to choose from all of which you can't change the name of or really customize at all. Imagine going out of the way to go tame something like Gara to be told that oh, that random Turtle is clearly a better choice here and that you are majorly missing out if you don't use the Turtle for it's specialization ability. Yes, it's true that's how it's working at the moment, but i'm asking to remove that limitation completely, because it doesn't exist for any real important reason. 

And to add to that, Warlock pets don't have specializations.

So are you actually saying, you want all the pets to have the same abilities, just a different look?

Mate, if I (as a warlock) want a tank pet, I have a single choice and if I want an interrupt, I need another (single) pet. No choice whatsoever. I also need to chose, which ability/pet I need for an encounter. You have much more options, yet you still complain, that you don't have everything?

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1 hour ago, leapingshadow said:

The difference with Warlocks though, is that their pets are fundamentally different than a Hunter's. Hunter's have the rare tames and hundreds of pets to choose to tame and use. Warlock demons are more stat sticks than a Hunter is, they have like 1-2 abilities and don't have access to huge raid wide buffs like Heroism and Battle Resurrects. With Warlocks there are like 5 pets to choose from all of which you can't change the name of or really customize at all. Imagine going out of the way to go tame something like Gara to be told that oh, that random Turtle is clearly a better choice here and that you are majorly missing out if you don't use the Turtle for it's specialization ability. Yes, it's true that's how it's working at the moment, but i'm asking to remove that limitation completely, because it doesn't exist for any real important reason. 

And to add to that, Warlock pets don't have specializations.

1.Specializations are having less abilities.

2.More pets will have Blood Lust, way more than in live.

3. More families are becoming unique and becoming useful.

4.All pets has the same damage and tanking capabilities.

I agree behind the illogical thing about changing specializations in classes and also pets but, Hunters can have up to 5 pets with them and i'm sure mostly everyone has more than one favorite pet. The lock on specializations for the pets is logical because you are not really limiting the player since they can have more than one pet at their side. Classes cannot be locked on specializations because it's illogical game wise.

 

Think about Pokemon when thinking about Hunter's pets. You cannot have one Pokemon doing everything because it's illogical.

Edited by Undeadxy

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This was a really long post to deflect that, unless there's further changes, Spirit Beasts, the pets a Hunter player would have most likely spent the most time looking for and playing with, will essentially no longer be used for anything other than soloing, and perhaps some pvp, and that any pet like Netherrays, with an active ability situationally useful in pve such as dispels along with a powerful cd like Bloodlust, will still be the most desirable pve pet simply because they provide the most value. It doesn't matter if they add more pet families with Lust / Heroism, it still creates the same problem where you are still basically carrying at least one of them for the sake of having the best range of pve utility and damage available with you at all times over the other families. 

The abilities themselves are just woeful when listed like that too. Unique pet skills (that are useful) were always a bit rare and counter-intuitive to the class , exclusive to a mere handful of families from Vanilla to current day where the days of having unique skills and dedicated talent trees introduced in Cataclysm are long gone, and have always seemed to end up being homogenised, at least to an extent, until we end up with a list such as this, where active abilities that either deal direct damage (such as Bite, Claw, etc) are available on ALL pets and do normalised damage, or that provide a buff or debuff fall into the category of being useful or not so much. 

Take for instance, Shell Shield vs Thick Hide. On live, Shell Shield on autocast will cast the ability when your pet's health drops to the threshold, but is on half the cd that Thick Hide has... so despite Ox and so forth being tamable, they're simply just not as good as existing tanky pets such as turtles right off the bat. 

Ankle Bite is an ability to me that always seemed like the poor man's Charge that Boars used to provide in Vanilla, a minor snare that you would often overwrite yourself with your own abilities, with no real use for pve and outshone in pvp where snares are plentiful but damage, hard cc and utility are king, which means that pets with Mortal Wounds and Dispels would be superior choices, even over pets such as Spiders, whose snare can be applied from the 40 yard range, as opposed to Ankle Crack's melee range limitation, and it will be increasingly overshadowed if MM - the spec that arguably had the most to benefit from having a pet with a snare for kiting - will no longer have access to pets. 

Agile Reflexes may as well be called Rest or Play v2.0 for how useful it is in pve and pvp, and what it actually is too; an ability to keep non-Tenacity pets from dying while soloing. 

They could be a lot more imaginative and bold here without adding stuff like a 4 second placate or stuns, but like forgotten pet families that were once popular, such as Shale Spiders, who no longer have anything distinctive about them despite the fact they remain classed as Exotic, they don't seem willing to commit to what would now be a huge undertaking to provide more unique and useful skills (that aren't just bring the class buff to work pets either) or create a talent tree system for hunter pets again. 

I'm not the best hunter in the world, but I have been playing on it long enough to remember running around Azeroth taming higher level pets to learn the next rank of Dash and Growl and Bite and whatever just to dismiss them afterwards, and this is the sort of unfun tediousness that the blue post reminds me of, as well as reminding the cynic in me that many new rarer or sought after pet spawns typically belong to the more useful pet families, almost as if they know. 

In all fairness though, the hunter playerbase is a fussy and arsey bunch of customers. MM for example is split down the middle of people who never wanted to run with a pet in the first place and those who feel it defeats the entire purpose of the class they've played with for years, and I've wanted melee back ever since they took it away and am one of the biggest critics of the SV spec despite playing it nonstop since Legion dropped.

I just wish they had just been more honest; "Right, listen boys and girls, hunters are the most popular by far class in WoW, but less than half of you know that Growl can be turned off. We've had enough and took pets away from MM entirely and if you keep this up, we'll make you play with Wands that can't be transmogged, and if you don't believe us, ask the one weird person in your guild who's always been a BM hunter where their Spirit Beast is next time you're raiding. Yes, we will add new pets to tame that you can PVE with that aren't Netherrays, but it's not on a high priority list when the majority of your arrow wanker kin just want to be able to tame a giraffe for no other reason than the fact that they currently can't. Seriously. Stop asking for giraffes. We're horrible and won't do it." 

 

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2 hours ago, Undeadxy said:

Think about Pokemon when thinking about Hunter's pets. You cannot have one Pokemon doing everything because it's illogical.

You tell that to Ditto! 

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52 minutes ago, Plergoth said:

This was a really long post to deflect that, unless there's further changes, Spirit Beasts, the pets a Hunter player would have most likely spent the most time looking for and playing with, will essentially no longer be used for anything other than soloing, and perhaps some pvp, and that any pet like Netherrays, with an active ability situationally useful in pve such as dispels along with a powerful cd like Bloodlust, will still be the most desirable pve pet simply because they provide the most value. It doesn't matter if they add more pet families with Lust / Heroism, it still creates the same problem where you are still basically carrying at least one of them for the sake of having the best range of pve utility and damage available with you at all times over the other families. 
 

How is having 10% increased HP and an extra survival CD a bad thing in raids? I have never been in a raid and had someone sit there saying "Man, I sure wish we had a hunter in here so we could lust!" People usually just look at the mage or shaman and... well ask them to do the lust. If ferocity legitimately had more dps ya, I' understand, but they don't. Not having lust isn't going to make a pet useless in raids.

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Sorry... first time poster here... but My two cents from how I feel about it (it's just my opinion. doesn't make it right and you don't have to agree with it). BM hunters provide dungeon and raid utility with the exotic pets. Don't take that away from us. You have already neutered our DPS against most other classes.

We use to be able to give raid buffs depending on our pets. They took that away. We have to have something for being passed over time and time again for any type of DPS boost to get us out of the bottom of the charts. (A 2.5% buff across the board is really just a slap in the face). 

How many times have you been in a dungeon and no one has hero / blood lust or the tank / healer dies and it comes down to the hunter to get a rez out to prevent the wipe? or maybe hunter feigns death when wipe is immanent to be able to rez the healer so get everyone else up? I am not saying it happens all the time, but it is a great utility hunter provide. We're kinda like jack of all trades, master of none. We can do a little bit of everything, but don't really excel at anything.

About the only other advantage to our class is we have about ultimate mobility to cast on the move. At time, this is the only reason why I can do dps to match some of the other classes. WOW going to take that away too?

I love playing my hunter, it's my main for 3-4 years now. But this is their game. They are going to do things as they see fit regardless how anyone feels. I haven't seen anyone from wow say "you know what, all these people who play (insert class here) saying the class needs some tuning, maybe we need to look into it.

If you don't like a class or the game, change class or don't give them your subscription. We all have a choice.

 

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16 minutes ago, Aegrotat said:

How is having 10% increased HP and an extra survival CD a bad thing in raids? I have never been in a raid and had someone sit there saying "Man, I sure wish we had a hunter in here so we could lust!" People usually just look at the mage or shaman and... well ask them to do the lust. If ferocity legitimately had more dps ya, I' understand, but they don't. Not having lust isn't going to make a pet useless in raids.

Ferocity will most likely be the best for Mythic+ since it's a 5 man thing and you won't always have a Shaman or a Mage on all Mythic+ dungeons. All the specializations are actually good for raids. Let's say there is an annoying slow aoe ability in the encounter, you could use a Cunning pet to use Master Call and be immune from slows. Tenacity gives a 10% max HP increase and that's actually decent, you might need it vs a boss that has a powerful aoe or when you are chosen to deal with a specific boss ability.

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2 minutes ago, Undeadxy said:

Ferocity will most likely be the best for Mythic+ since it's a 5 man thing and you won't always have a Shaman or a Mage on all Mythic+ dungeons. All the specializations are actually good for raids. Let's say there is an annoying slow aoe ability in the encounter, you could use a Cunning pet to use Master Call and be immune from slows. Tenacity gives a 10% max HP increase and that's actually decent, you might need it vs a boss that has a powerful aoe or when you are chosen to deal with a specific boss ability.

I'll definitely give you credit for the Mythic+ thing. Though, I also find it extremely unlikely that, with an increased repertoire of pets with the abilities, people won't find one pet that they enjoy that's also ferocity. I mean, people already pick multiple pets that have different utilities, this will just make that job easier.

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    • By Staff
      We have a detailed explanation of one of the big changes to professions in the upcoming expansion. Inspiration is being removed and replaced by Concentration, which is an actual resource you'll be spending to improve your crafting. You will automatically gain Concentration over time, and you can refund it in other ways a well. Check out all the details below. 
      (Source)
      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, tell their customers that they would recraft an item an indeterminate number of times, and summarily charge a specific price per recraft until their Inspiration struck.
      So we’re making changes, because:
      There’s a lack of decision making and agency for the crafter. There’s a lack of clarity for customers who just want items made. It’s based heavily in RNG, which was never the goal of the Professions revamp. In The War Within, we’re removing Inspiration. In its place, we have a new ability for crafters to utilize.
      Concentration
      Concentration is a resource, and you’ll have a separate pool of Concentration for each crafting profession.
      It represents your ability to heavily focus on your recipes and exceed your normal capabilities. You choose when you want to Concentrate using a button in the crafting window, empowering your next craft(s). Doing so will cause the craft to automatically reach the next level of quality, no questions asked.
      However, such heavy focus can take a toll, costing you some of your profession’s Concentration resource. The cost is determined by how far away you are from crafting that next quality tier and is modified by a few variables such as Profession Specializations, Finishing Reagents, and whether you are crafting consumables, reagents, or actual equipment.
      For example, if you’re incredibly close to being able to craft a max-quality sword, you won’t need to Concentrate too hard to finish that project. However, if you’re just barely able to craft that same sword at quality 3, you will likely have to devote most of your Concentration to craft it at quality 4.
      For those who want to focus on ingenious breakthroughs when concentrating, we also have a new stat to support your endeavors. This is Ingenuity, which gives you a chance to refund the Concentration spent on a craft. The more Ingenuity you have, the higher your chance to get that full refund. Outside of these Ingenuity-fueled refunds, Concentration will also automatically regenerate over time when you aren’t sitting at its cap.
      Our goal is to provide crafters with a more deterministic way to accomplish the original objectives and intent behind Inspiration. You can use it to shore up a lack of skill, gear, or max-quality reagents while still making higher-quality crafts. Maybe you just want to save some money by using lower-quality reagents in a craft you can otherwise guarantee at maximum quality. Either way, we want to give crafters more agency over their crafting, provide more room for decision-making in the professions ecosystem, and provide a resource that you can use without having to give your customers a full statistical breakdown.
      Please note that much of this system is currently being implemented, and will become available for testing in future builds of the War Within Alpha.
      Thank you very much!
    • By Staff
      Blizzard have posted the very first War Within Alpha development notes! We have a whole lot of class changes for Druids, Evokers, Monks, Paladins and Warriors, as well as many profession changes, UI improvements and more.
      Alpha, April 18 (Source)
      NEW ZONES AND DELVES
      Isle of Dorn NEW DUNGEONS
      Cinderbrew Meadery The Rookery CHARACTER LEVEL
      Developers’ note: With each phase, we encourage players to make a new template character and avoid using their previous characters as they could potentially be in a broken state. After making a new template character, make sure to talk to Questzertauren and he will prepare you for any available content.
      Level 70 Character Template Maximum Level: 73 CLASSES
      Developer’s note: Hero Talents can be accessed either naturally by leveling (first point is granted at 71) or can be boosted by interacting with the Questzertauren npc in Orgrimmar and Stormwind which will immediately boost you to level 71 and also grant you all 10 Hero Talent points. Please note: Doing this will give you a permanent debuff that will reduce your damage done (so you do not overpower content due to having a larger amount of talent points than intended). Additionally, this process is not reversible, so if you’d like to experience the natural flow of progression, you’ll need to make a new character. Additionally, as this is Alpha, there are a few callouts we wanted to make in regards to the readiness of Hero Talents. Several Hero Talents trees have not had their new visual effects or audio added. These trees are using placeholder assets for now and will be updated over the course of Alpha. Power tuning of these abilities is still in the early passes and will be ongoing. There might be abilities that are labeled as NYI - these are Not Yet Implemented and will likely be a little bit prone to bugs until they’re fully implemented. The User Interface frame for Hero Talents is still being polished and is missing a few bits of art, animation, and other small changes. The following Hero Talents are available for playtesting in Public Alpha 1: DEATH KNIGHT Deathbringer (Blood/Frost) Rider of the Apocalypse (Frost/Unholy) San’layn (Unholy/Blood) DEMON HUNTER Aldrachi Reaver (Havoc/Vengeance) DRUID Druid of the Claw (Feral/Guardian) Elune’s Chosen (Balance/Guardian) Keeper of the Grove (Balance/Restoration) Wildstalker (Feral/Restoration) EVOKER Chronowarden (Augmentation/Preservation) Flameshaper (Devastation/Preservation) Scalecommander (Devastation/Augmentation) HUNTER Dark Ranger (Marksmanship/Beast Mastery) Pack Leader (Beast Mastery/Survival) Sentinel (Survival/Marksmanship) MAGE Frostfire (Frost/Fire) Spellslinger (Frost/Arcane) Sunfury (Arcane/Fire) MONK Conduit of the Celestials (Mistweaver/Windwalker) Master of Harmony (Mistweaver/Brewmaster) Developer’s note: Master of Harmony will be accessible in the Hero Talent Tree, but there will be a handful of talents that are not fully implemented. Shado-Pan (WIndwalker/Brewmaster) PALADIN Herald of the Sun (Holy/Retribution) Lightsmith (Holy/Protection) Templar (Retribution/Protection) PRIEST Oracle (Holy/Discipline) Voidweaver (Discipline/Shadow) ROGUE Trickster (Subtlety/Outlaw) SHAMAN Farseer (Restoration/Elemental) WARLOCK Diabolist (Destruction/Demonology) Hellcaller (Destruction/Affliction) Soul Harvester (Demonology/Affliction) WARRIOR Colossus (Protection/Arms) Mountain Thane (Protection/Fury) Slayer (Fury/Arms) DRUID Developer’s note: 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 bottom half of the tree are divided into “physical” and “magical” halves that you can access by investing in either Feral / Guardian or Restoration / Balance sections. More details can be found in the Feedback: Druid Updates 1 thread. New Talent: Oakskin – Survival Instincts and Barkskin reduce damage taken by an additional 10%. New Talent: Fluid Form – Shred and Rake can be used in any form and shifts you into Cat Form. Mangle can be used in any form and shifts you into Bear Form. Wrath and Starfire shifts you into Moonkin Form, if known. New Talent: Ursoc’s Spirit – Stamina in Bear Form is increased by 10%. New Talent: Instincts of the Claw – Shred, Swipe, Rake, Mangle, and Thrash damage increased by 5/10%. New Talent: Lore of the Grove – Moonfire and Sunfire damage increased by 5/10%. Rejuvenation and Wild Growth healing increased by 3/5%. New Talent: Starlight Conduit – Wrath, Starsurge, and Starfire damage increased by 5%. For non-Balance, Starsurge’s cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds and its mana cost is reduced by 50%. Heart of the Wild now reduces the global cooldown of affected Balance cast-time spells. Cat Form now increases the range of auto-attacks and melee abilities by 3 yards. Swiftmend has been removed from the talent tree and is now baseline for Restoration Druids. Improved Swipe has been removed from the talent tree and its benefit added to Swipe by default. Moonkin Form has been removed from the talent tree and is now baseline for Balance Druids. Feline Swiftness is now a 1 point talent that increases movement speed by 15%. It’s position is moved to gate 1 under Rake. Thick Hide is now a 1 point talent that reduces damage taken by 4%. Natural Recovery is now a 1 point talent that increases healing received by 4%. It no longer increases healing done. Astral Influence is now a 1 point talent that increases the range of all your spells by 5 yards. It no longer increases auto attack or melee ability range. Primal Fury now also increases Critical Strike damage of Mangle by 20%. Ursine Vigor is now a 1 point talent that increases Stamina and armor in Bear Form by 15% for 4 seconds. Guardian Druid improved Bear Form Stamina bonus decreased to 10% (was 20%). Lycara’s Teachings is now a 2 point talent that grants 3/6% of various secondary stats. Forestwalk is now a 1 point talent. It’s bonus increases your movement speed and healing received by 8% for 6 seconds. Well-Honed Instincts is now a 1 point talent, its effect can occur once every 120 seconds. Gale Winds / Incessant Winds choice node removed. Tireless Pursuit removed. Balance Developer’s note: 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. Learn more here 1. New Talent: Greater Alignment – Celestial Alignment lasts 40% longer. During Celestial Alignment, Solar Eclipse increases Nature damage done by an additional 5% and Lunar Eclipse increases Arcane damage done by an additional 5%. New Talent: Stellar Amplification – Starsurge increases the damage the target takes from your periodic effects and Shooting Stars for 5 seconds. Reapplying this effect extends its duration, up to 20 seconds. New Talent: Harmony of the Heavens – Starsurge or Starfall increase your current Eclipse’s Arcane or Nature damage bonus by an additional 1%, up to 5%. New Talent: Touch the Cosmos – Casting Wrath in an Eclipse has an 8% chance to make your next Starsurge free. Casting Starfire in an Eclipse has a 10% chance to make your next Starfall free. Umbral Embrace has been redesigned – Wrath and Starfire have a 20% chance to cause the next Wrath or Starfire you cast in Eclipse to become Astral and deal 100% additional damage. Now a 1 point talent. New Talent: Umbral Inspiration – Consuming Umbral Embrace increases the damage of your Moonfire, Sunfire, Shooting Stars, and Starfall by 20% for 5 seconds. Astral Smolder has been redesigned – Wrath and Starfire have a 45% chance to cause their targets to languish for an additional 80% of their damage dealt over 6 seconds. Astral Communion has been redesigned – Maximum Astral Power increased by 20. Entering Eclipse grants 12 Astral Power. Nature’s Grace has been redesigned – When Eclipse ends or when you enter combat, enter a Dreamstate, reducing the cast time of your next 2 Starfires or Wraths by 20% and increasing their damage by 50%. All ability damage increased by 6%. Wrath, Starfire, and Shooting Stars damage increased by an additional 15%. Wild Mushrooms damage increased by an additional 25%. Astral Power generation reduced: Wrath: 6 (was ? Starfire: 8 (was 10) New Moon: 10 (was 12) Half Moon: 20 (was 24) Full Moon: 40 (was 50) Fury of Elune: 40 / 2.5 per tick (was 48 / 3 per tick) Celestial Alignment duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds). Incarnation: Chosen of Elune duration reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds). Mastery: Astral Invocation value reduced by 17%. Aetherial Kindling now extends during of active Sunfires and Moonfires by 3 seconds (was 4 seconds). Orbital Strike damage reduced by 25%. Umbral Intensity now increases Starfire’s damage as well as its area-of-effect damage scaling – Solar Eclipse increases the damage of Wrath by an additional 20/40%. Lunar Eclipse increases the damage of Starfire by 20/40% and the damage it deals to nearby enemies by an additional 15/30%. Waning Twilight is now a 1 point talent increasing damage you deal to targets with 3 or more of your periodic effects by 6%. Balance of all Things now increases Critical Strike chance by 10/20%, decreasing by 1/2% every second. Denizen of the Dream damage increased by 50%. Friend of the Fae has been removed. Denizen of the Dream moved to Friend of the Fae’s location. Positions of Aetherial Kindling and Lunar Shrapnel swapped. Orbit Breaker and Sundered Firmament are now a choice node where Orbit Breaker was. Primodial Arcanic Pulsar has been removed. Feral Developer’s note: 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. Learn more here 1. New Talent: Resourceful Hunter – Leech increased by 2%. Versatility increased by 2%. New Talent: Coiled to Spring – If you generate a combo point in excess of what you can store, your next Ferocious Bite or Primal Wrath deals 10% increased direct damage. Developer’s note: This will only trigger during Berserk if you generate a combo point in excess of five while you already have 3 stacks of Overflowing Power. New Talent: Savage Fury – Tiger’s Fury increases your Haste by 8% and Energy recovery rate by 20% for 6 seconds. Mastery: Razor Claws has been redesigned – Now increases damage of Cat Form bleed and other periodic abilities. Predator has been redesigned – No longer causes Tiger’s Fury’s cooldown to be reset when a target dies with one of your bleeds active. Tiger’s Fury lasts 5 additional seconds. Your combo point-generating abilities’ direct damage is increased by 40% of your Haste. Taste for Blood has been redesigned – No longer scales with number of bleeds on a target. Ferocious Bite damage increased by 15% and an additional 15% during Tiger’s Fury. Raging Fury has been redesigned – No longer increases Tiger’s Fury duration from spending combo points. Tiger’s Fury lasts 5 additional seconds. All ability damage increased by 8%. The direct damage of Shred, Rake, Swipe / Brutal Slash, and Thrash increased by an additional 10%. Berserk duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds). Incarnation: Avatar of Ashamane duration reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds). Berserk no longer increases the damage of Shred and Rake. It now increases all ability and auto-attack damage by 10%. Sabertooth now increases damage Ferocious Bite’s primary target takes from all of your Cat Form periodic damage by 3% per combo point spent for 4 seconds (instead of 5% damage dealt by all Rips on all targets). Tireless Energy now increases passive Energy generation by 8%/15% (was 10%/20%) and total Energy by 20/40 (was 30/60). Primal Wrath Energy cost increased to 30 and its direct damage increased by 50%. Tear Open Wounds now consumes 6 seconds of Rip damage during Berserk. Moonfire in Cat Form with Lunar Inspiration duration increased to 18 seconds and overall damage reduced by 10%. Moment of Clarity now increases the rate that Omen of Clarity triggers by 30% (was 50%). Berserk: Heart of the Lion now reduces Berserk’s cooldown by 60 seconds (was reduces cooldown by 0.5 seconds per combo point spent). Berserk: Frenzy now causes enemies to bleed for 135% of all direct damage dealt by combo point generating abilities (was 100%). Soul of the Forest restores 2 Energy per combo point spent (was 3 Energy). Apex Predator’s chance to trigger on a single target is reduced, but its chance to trigger in area-of-effect increases at a faster rate. The following talents have been removed: Dire Fixation Protective Growth Rampant Ferocity Relentless Predator Taste for Blood moved to Relentless Predator’s old location. Infected Wounds moved to Taste for Blood’s old location. Restoration Developer’s note: 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. With the removal of Adaptive Swarm, we’re opting to replace it with some new Heart of the Wild synergy that both increases the uptime of the effect and enables the Druid to focus on the hybrid gameplay further for its duration. Learn more here 1. New Talent: Dream of Cenarius – While Heart of the Wild is active, Wrath and Shred transfer 150% of their damage and Starfire and Swipe transfer 100% of their damage into healing onto a nearby ally. New Talent: Call of the Elder Druid – When you shift into a combat shapeshift form or cast Starsurge, you gain Heart of the Wild for 10 seconds, once every 60 seconds. New Talent: Thriving Vegetation – Rejuvenation instantly heals for 15/30% of its periodic healing and Regrowth’s duration is increased by 3/6 seconds. New Talent: Prosperity – Swiftmend now has 2 charges. Rejuvenation healing increased by 30%. Grove Guardian’s healing reduced by 15%. Wild Synthesis Wild Growth healing reduced by 15%. Verdant Infusion now extends the duration of heal over time effects by 8 seconds (was 12 seconds). Nurturing Dormancy is now capped at 4 second extension (was 6 seconds). Abundance now increases the Critical Strike chance of Regrowth by 8% and decreases its mana cost by 8% per stack (was 5%). Flourish has moved to a choice node with Photosynthesis Invigorate has moved to a choice node with Embrace of the Dream. Soul of the Forest and Heart of the Wild added to Personal Resource Display. The following talents have been removed: Adaptive Swarm Unbridled Swarm Luxuriant Soil 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 Developer’s note: 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). As a result, we’re reducing the threat these spells generate. Fire Breath threat generated reduced by 50%. Pyre threat generated reduced by 30%. Preservation Developer’s note: In this update, our goal was to incorporate Lifespark (Season 1 set bonus for Preservation) into the talent tree and expand talent options by improving the pathing of the tree. We also wanted to keep the flavor of the left side of the tree being Green, the middle being Red, and the right being Bronze. New Talent: Lifespark – Reversion healing has a chance to grant you instant cast Living Flame and increase its damage/healing by 50%. New Talent: Titan’s Gift – Essence Burst increases the effectiveness of your next Essence ability by 25%. Life-Giver’s Flame is now a 1 point node (was 2). Its position has been relocated at the bottom middle of the tree. Grace Period is now a 1 point node (was 2). Its position has been relocated as a capstone below Timeless Magic. Font of Magic and Power Nexus have been relocated to the middle center of the tree. Cycle of Life has been relocated as a capstone at the bottom left of the tree. MONK Developer’s note: 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. More details can be found in the Feedback: Monk Updates 1 thread. New Talent: Crashing Momentum – Targets you Roll through are snared by 40% for 5 seconds. New Talent: Bounding Agility – Roll and Chi Torpedo travel a small distance further. New Talent: Wind’s Reach – The range of Disable is increased by 5 yards. The duration of Crashing Momentum is increased by 3 seconds and its snare now reduces movement speed by an additional 20%. New Talent: Ancient Arts – Reduces the cooldown of Paralysis by 8/15 seconds and the cooldown of Leg Sweep by 5/10 seconds. New Talent: Jade Walk – While out of combat, your movement speed is increased by 15%. New Talent: Pressure Points – Paralysis now removes all Enrage effects from its target. New Talent: Energy Transfer – Successfully interrupting an enemy reduces the cooldown of Paralysis and Roll by 5 seconds. New Talent: Quick Footed – The duration of snare effects on you is reduced by 20%. New Talent: Spirit’s Essence: Transcendence – Transfer snares targets within 10 yards by 70% for 4 seconds when cast. New Talent: Peace and Prosperity – Reduces the cooldown of Ring of Peace by 5 seconds and Song of Chi-Ji’s cast time is reduced by 0.5 seconds. New Talent: Swift Art – Roll removes a snare effect once every 30 seconds. New Talent: Celestial Determination – While your celestial is active, you cannot be slowed below 90% normal movement speed. New Talent: Martial Instincts – Increases your Physical damage done by 2/4% and Avoidance increased by 2/4%. New Talent: Healing Winds: Transcendence – Transfer immediately heals you for 15% of your maximum health. New Talent: Chi Proficiency – Magical damage done increased by 2/4% and healing done increased by 2/4%. New Talent: Lighter Than Air – Roll causes you to become lighter than air, allowing you to double jump to dash forward a short distance once within 5 seconds. New Talent: Flow of Chi – You gain a bonus effect based on your current health. Above 90% health: Movement speed increased by 5%. This bonus stacks with similar effects. Between 90% and 35% health: Damage taken reduced by 5%. Below 35% health: Healing received increased by 10%. New Talent: Rushing Reflexes – Your heightened reflexes allow you to react swiftly to the presence of enemies, causing you to quickly lunge to the nearest enemy within 10 yards after you Roll. New Talent: Transcendence: Linked Spirits – Transcendence now tethers your spirit onto an ally for 1 hour. Use Transcendence: Transfer to teleport to your ally’s location. Tiger Tail Sweep has been redesigned – Increases the range of Leg Sweep by 4 yards. Now a 1 point talent. Elusive Mists has been redesigned – Reduces all damage taken by you and your target while channeling Soothing Mists by 6%. Now a 1 point talent. Chi Wave has been redesigned – Every 15 seconds, your next Rising Sun Kick or Vivify releases a wave of Chi energy that flows through friends and foes, dealing Nature damage or healing. Bounces up to 7 times to targets within 25 yards. Summon White Tiger Statue has been redesigned – Invoking Xuen, the White Tiger also spawns a White Tiger Statue at your location that pulses damage to all enemies ever 2 seconds for 10 seconds. Ironshell Brew has been redesigned – Increases your maximum health by an additional 10% and your damage taken is reduced by an additional 10% while Fortifying Brew is active. Escape from Reality has been redesigned – After you use Transcendence: Transfer, you can use Transcendence: Transfer again within 10 seconds, ignoring its cooldown. Fatal Touch has been redesigned – Touch of Death increases your damage by 5% for 30 seconds after being cast and its cooldown is reduced by 90 seconds. Now a 1 point talent. Clash has moved to the Class tree. Improved Roll is now baseline for all Monk specializations. Fortifying Brew cooldown is now 2 minutes for Mistweaver and Windwalker. Many talents have changed positions. The following talents are now 1 point: Save Them All Bounce Back Resonant Fists Grace of the Crane Fast Feet The following talents have been removed: Improved Roll Improved Vivify Ferocity of Xuen Hasty Provocation Eye of the Tiger Close to Heart Generous Pour Resonant Fists Dampen Harm and Summon Black Ox Statue have been removed for Windwalker and Mistweaver. Summon White Tiger Statue and Summon Jade Serpent Statue have been removed for Brewmaster and Windwalker. Mistweaver Developer’s note: 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 as we iterate in The War Within. Learn more here. New Talent: Crane Style – Rising Sun Kick now kicks up a Gust of Mist to heal 2 allies within 40 yards. Spinning Crane Kick and Blackout Kick have a chance to kick up a Gust of Mist to heal 1 ally within 40 yards. New Talent: Deep Clarity – After you fully consume Thunder Focus Tea, your next Vivify triggers Zen Pulse. New Talent: Chi Harmony – Renewing Mist applies Chi Harmony to its initial target, increasing their healing taken from you by 50% for 8 seconds. Zen Pulse has been redesigned – Renewing Mist’s heal over time has a chance to cause your next Vivify to also trigger a Zen Pulse on its target and all allies with Renewing Mist, healing them increased by 5% per Renewing Mist active, up to 50%. Jadefire Stomp no longer casts Essence Font, its cooldown is reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds), and now casts Gusts of Mist on each ally healed. Gust of Mist healing increased by 20%. Jade Bond now increases the healing of Yu’lon’s Soothing Breath by 300% (was 40%). Invigorating Mist healing increased by 8%. Vivify healing increased by 9%. Vivify now costs 3% base mana (was 3.4%). Developer’s note: We are increasing the effectiveness of baseline Vivify with the removal of the Clouded Focus talent. Burst of Life’s icon has been changed. Various talents have changed locations. The following talents have been removed: Essence Font Upwelling Font of Life Clouded Focus Windwalker Developer’s note: 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. Learn more here 3. New Talent: Acclamation – Rising Sun Kick increases the damage your target receives from you by 4% for 12 seconds. Multiple instances may overlap. New Talent: Flurry of Xuen – Your spells and abilities have a chance to activate Flurry of Xuen, unleashing a barrage of deadly swipes to deal Physical damage in a 10 yard cone. Invoking Xuen, the White Tiger activates Flurry of Xuen. Developer’s note: This ability is still being implemented and will be added in the subsequent Public Alpha build. New Talent: Martial Mixture – Blackout Kick increases the damage of your next Tiger Palm by 10%, stacking up to 12 times. New Talent: Courageous Impulse – The Blackout Kick! effect also increases the damage of your next Blackout Kick by 175%. New Talent: Energy Burst – When you consume Blackout Kick!, you have a 100% chance to generate 1 Chi. New Talent: Gale Force – Targets struck by Strike of the Windlord are sent reeling from its impact, causing them to become vulnerable to your attacks for 10 seconds. Your abilities have a 100% chance to affect the target a second time at 10% effectiveness as Nature damage while they are vulnerable. New Talent: Dual Threat – Your auto attacks have a 20% chance to instead kick your target dealing Physical damage and increasing your damage dealt by 5% for 5 seconds. New Talent: Momentum Boost – Fists of Fury’s damage is increased by 100% of your Haste and Fists of Fury does 10% more damage each time it deals damage, resetting when Fists of Fury ends. Your auto attack speed is increased by 60% for 8 sec after Fists of Fury ends. New Talent: Ordered Elements – During Storm, Earth, and Fire, Rising Sun Kick reduces Chi costs by 1 for 5 seconds and Blackout Kick reduces the cooldown of affected abilities by an additional 1 second. Activating Storm, Earth, and Fire resets the remaining cooldown of Rising Sun Kick and grants 2 Chi. New Talent: Sequenced Strikes – You have a 100% chance to gain Blackout Kick! after consuming Dance of Chi-Ji. New Talent: Revolving Whirl – Whirling Dragon Punch has a 100% chance to activate Dance of Chi-Ji. New Talent: Knowledge of the Broken Temple – Whirling Dragon Punch grants 4 stacks of Teachings of the Monastery and its damage is increased by 20%. Teachings of the Monastery can now stack up to 8 times. New Talent: Singularly Focused Jade – Jadefire Stomp’s initial hit now strikes 1 target, but deals 500% increased damage and healing. New Talent: Communion With Wind – Strike of the Windlord’s cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds and its damage is increased by 20%. New Talent: Brawler’s Intensity – The cooldown of Rising Sun Kick is reduced by 1 second and the damage of Blackout Kick is increased by 10%. New Talent: Combat Wisdom – Every 15 seconds, your next Tiger Palm also casts Expel Harm and deals 100% additional damage. Replaces Expel Harm. Glory of Dawn has been redesigned – Rising Sun Kick has a chance equal to 100% of your Haste to trigger a second time, dealing Physical damage and restoring 1 Chi. Rushing Jade Wind has been redesigned – Strike of the Windlord applies Mark of the Crane to all enemies struck and summons a whirling tornado around you, causing Physical damage over 8 seconds to all enemies within 8 yards. Jadefire Stomp has been redesigned – Strike the Ground fiercely to expose a path of jade for 30 seconds that increases your movement speed by 20% while inside, dealing Nature damage to up to 5 enemies and restores health to up to 5 allies within 30 yards caught in the path. Up to 5 enemies caught in the path suffer additional damage. Inner Peace has been redesigned – Increases maximum Energy by 30. Tiger Palm’s energy cost reduced by 5. Mastery: Combo Strikes is now 20% more effective. Touch of Karma is now baseline for Windwalker. Whirling Dragon Punch now deals additional damage to the first target struck and its damage is reduced beyond 5 targets. Expel Harm no longer generates Chi for Windwalker. Flying Serpent Kick no longer deals damage. Mark of the Crane now only applies to the primary target of each strike. Teachings of the Monastery now stacks up to 4 times (was 3). Thunderfist now always generates 4 stacks of Thunderfist and additional stacks of Thunderfist per each additional target struck. Transfer the Power no longer stacks from Rushing Jade Wind, but now stacks from Spinning Crane Kick. Crane Vortex now increases the damage of Spinning Crane Kick by 15/30% (was 10/20%). Spinning Crane Kick now cancels from using other spells or abilities, but no longer prevents auto-attacks for its duration. Empowered Tiger Lightning’s effect is now baseline for Xuen, the White Tiger. Invoker’s Delight now increases Haste by 20% while active (was 33%). Xuen’s Bond now decreases the cooldown of Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger by 0.2 seconds (was 0.1 second) per Combo Strikes activation. Dance of Chi-Ji’s chance to trigger reduced by 25%. Tiger Palm Energy cost increased to 60 (was 50). Chi Burst no longer generates Chi for Windwalker. Many talents have changed positions. Drinking Horn Cover and Spiritual Focus are now a choice node together. The following talents are now 1 point: Touch of the Tiger Hardened Soles The following talents have been removed: Power Strikes Fatal Flying Guillotine Skyreach Serenity Forbidden Technique Widening Whirl Bonedust Brew Attenuation Dust in the Wind Flashing Fists Open Palm PALADIN Multiple applications of Greater Judgment may overlap. This also functions with Retribution’s multiple stack application. Glyph of the Luminous Charger now only works while Crusader Aura is active. Holy Developer’s note: 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. Learn more here. New Talent: Bestow Light – Light of the Martyr’s health threshold is reduced to 70% and increases Holy Shock’s healing by an additional 5% for every 5 seconds Light of the Martyr is active, stacking up to 3 times. While below 70% health, the light urgently heals you every 1 second. Light of the Martyr has been redesigned – While above 80% health, Holy Shock’s healing is increased 20%, but creates a heal absorb on you for 30% of the amount healed that prevents Beacon of Light from healing you until it has dissipated. Blessing of Summer has been redesigned – Bless an ally for 30 seconds, causing 20% of all healing to be converted into damage onto a nearby enemy and 10% of all damage to be converted into healing onto an injured ally within 40 yards. Beacon of Light now transfers 15% of healing done (was 25%). Barrier Faith now transfers 20% of healing into its absorb (was 25%). Word of Glory healing increased by 25%. Light of Dawn healing increased by 20%. Holy Shock healing increased by 20%. Tyr’s Deliverance healing decreased by 15%. Sacrifice of the Just now reduces the cooldown of Blessing of Sacrifice by 15 seconds (was 60 seconds). Blessing of Sacrifice now transfers 30% of damage taken (was 20%) for Holy. Fixed an issue that caused Tyr’s Deliverance’s healing to not be affected by some modifiers, such as Avenging Wrath. Barrier Faith is now on a choice node with Holy Prism. Tyr’s Deliverance and Reclamation have changed positions in the tree. Light’s Hammer has been removed. Retribution Developer’s note: 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 difficult for us to make Critical Strike a stat that felt valuable. To address this, we’ve reworked and rebalanced these talents to not automatically crit. They will instead gain value when you do crit, such as increasing their critical strike damage.
      One of the sources of frustration we’ve seen when it comes to the Retribution spec tree is that there is a large amount of friction between Single Target and AoE builds, leaving very little wiggle room for any sort of hybridization. We’ve done some restructuring to alleviate some of this tension, to create more room to explore hybrid type builds for when the scenarios might call for it. Learn more here 2. New Talent: Burn to Ash – When Truth’s Wake critically strikes, its duration is extended by 2 seconds. Your other damage over time effects deal 30% increased damage to targets affected by Truth’s Wake. Righteous Cause has been redesigned – Each Holy Power spent has a 6% chance to reset the cooldown of Blade of Justice. Art of War has been redesigned – Your auto attacks have a 20% chance to reset the cooldown of Blade of Justice. Critical strikes increase this chance by an additional 10%. Divine Hammer has been redesigned – Divine Hammers spin around you, consuming a Holy Power to strike enemies within 8 yards for Radiant damage every 2.2 seconds. While active, your Holy Power generating abilities recharge 75% faster, and increase the rate at which Divine Hammer strikes by 15% when they are cast. Deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets. Now a 2 min cooldown. Damage increased by 300%. Divine Hammer base periodic decreased to 2.2 seconds (was 3 seconds) Period scales with Haste. Final Reckoning has been redesigned – Now increases the damage taken from your single target Holy Power spenders by 30%. Increases the damage taken from your other Holy Power spenders by 15%. Vengeful Wrath has been redesigned – Hammer of Wrath deals 50% increased damage to enemies below 35% health. Vanguard of Justice has been redesigned – Templar’s Verdict and Divine Storm cost 1 additional Holy Power and deal 20% increased damage. Templar Strikes has been redesigned: Charge cooldown increased by 15%. Templar Slash, 2nd part of combo, overrides Templar Strike for 5 seconds (was 4 seconds). Crusader Strike becomes a 2-part combo: Templar Strike slashes an enemy for damage and gets replaced by Templar Slash for 5 seconds. Templar Slash strikes an enemy for damage, and burns them for 50% of the damage dealt over 4 seconds. Truth’s Wake effect is now added to Wake of Ashes baseline. Highlord’s Judgment has been renamed to Highlord’s Wrath. Mastery: Hand of Light has been renamed to Mastery: Highlord’s Judgment – Now also causes Judgment to have a chance to blast the target with the Light, dealing Holy damage. Highlord’s Wrath has been redesigned – Mastery: Highlord’s Judgment is 50/100% more effective on Judgment and Hammer of Wrath. Judgment applies an additional stack of Greater Judgment if it is known. Adjudication has been redesigned – Critical Strike damage of your abilities increased by 5% and Hammer of Wrath also has a chance to cast Highlord’s Judgment. Blades of Light has been redesigned – Crusader Strike, Judgment, Hammer of Wrath, and damaging single target Holy Power abilities now deal Holystrike damage and your abilities that deal Holystrike damage deal 5% increased damage. Divine Arbiter now has an additional effect – Highlord’s Judgment and Holystrike damage abilities grant you a stack of Divine Arbiter. Searing Light now has an additional effect – Highlord’s Judgment and Radiant damage abilities have a chance to call down and explosion of Holy Fire. Blessed Hammer from Adjudication now spawns from the target of your Hammer of Wrath. Execution Sentence now causes the enemy to suffer 20% of the damage dealt during its time after it expires (was 30%). Execution Sentence damage no longer counts as a damage over time effect. WARRIOR Developer’s note: The Warrior class talent tree has been significantly reorganized to allow for more player choice and build diversity in Warrior builds, as well as improve access to utility abilities like Storm Bolt and Shockwave. Rage generation for all Warrior specs in Dragonflight has been higher than we’re happy with so we’ve removed or reduced the power of several Rage-generating effects. With tuning, this will introduce more tactical gameplay around when to use Rage spenders and make those spenders more impactful. More details can be found in the Feedback: Warrior Updates 1 thread. Significant re-arrangement of many talents on the Warrior tree. Berserker Rage now auto-learned at level 12. Thunder Clap base Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 30). Slam damage normalized across all specializations (Arms-only Slam damage bonus removed), and damage increased by 200%. Blood and Thunder no longer increases Rage cost or damage of Thunder Clap. Crackling Thunder also increases damage of Thunder Clap by 10%. Frothing Berserker now refunds 10% Rage for Arms and Fury, and 25% Rage for Protection. Shockwave no longer generates Rage on cast. Champion’s Spear generates 10 Rage on cast (was 20). Thunderous Roar no longer generates Rage on cast. Thunderous Words now causes Thunderous Roar’s Bleed effect to increase damage targets take from all the Warrior’s bleed effects, rather than passively increasing it all the time. The following talents have been removed: Titanic Throw Sonic Boom Arms Developer’s note: In Dragonflight, Arms Warriors were most impacted by Rage over-generation, and combined with Arms having several mechanics that interact with Rage spend (Tactician, Anger Management, and Test of Might) led to certain builds dominating for most of the expansion and led to Arms rotation being overwhelmed by ability resets. To address this, in The War Within, Arms is receiving significant Rage generation and Rage cost adjustments as to make Rage management interesting for Arms. Many Arms talents have also seen significant changes, with the aim to give Arms Warriors more choices for their builds and rotation based on their preferences and the content they are playing, as well as more control over how and when they generate additional Rage. Learn more here. Moderate re-arrangement of several talents on the Arms tree. New Talent: Finishing Blows – Overpower generates 8 Rage when used on a target below 35% health. Barbaric Training has been redesigned for Arms – Now grants 20% damage and 10% critical damage to Slam and Whirlwind. Storm of Swords has been redesigned – Now grants Whirlwind a 30% chance to make your next Whirlwind cost 100% less Rage. Rage generated from auto-attacks reduced by 16%. Whirlwind base Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 30). Rend base Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 30). Ignore Pain Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 40). Cleave damage increased by 5%. Whirlwind damage reduced by 33%. Collateral Damage’s damage bonus now applies to Cleave as well as Whirlwind. Unhinged now will cast Mortal Strike on your target if valid, falling back to a random target. Warlord’s Torment no longer triggers from Colossus Smash. Duration of Recklessness buff increased by 50% and bonus Rage generation reduced to 25% (was 100%). In for the Kill’s Haste bonus now lasts as long as Colossus Smash does. Improved Overpower increases number of Overpower charges by 1. Dreadnaught no longer increases number of Overpower charges. Strength of Arms no longer causes Overpower to generates 8 Rage when used on a target below 35% health. Tactician chance to reset cooldown of Overpower per Rage spent reduced to 1% (was 1.3%). Deft Experience increase to Tactician’s chance to reset cooldown of Overpower per Rage spent reduced to 0.5% (was 0.6%). Valor in Victory’s Versatility bonus increased to 2% (was 1%). Battlelord no longer generates Rage when triggered. Skullsplitter now accelerates Rend’s Bleed baseline. Ravager is now a choice node with Bladestorm. All existing Bladestorm sub-talents updated to work with both Ravager and Bladestorm. Bladestorm no longer generates Rage on cast. The following talents have been removed: Tide of Blood Reaping Swings Fury Developer’s note: In Dragonflight, the Fury talent tree allowed for players to specialize heavily in either Raging Blow or Bloodthirst, to the point of eliminating one or the other from their rotation. We think Fury works best when all the core rotational abilities see regular use, so we have made several changes to the Fury tree and abilities to ensure that both Raging Blow and Bloodthirst remain valuable for Fury Warriors in all builds, while maintaining build choice and rotational diversity for Fury Warriors with the return of Bladestorm to the Fury tree and the addition of a choice of Enrage effects. Learn more here 1. Fury Warriors now learn Defensive Stance by default. Moderate re-arrangement of several talents on the Fury tree. New Talent: Powerful Enrage: Enrage increases the damage your abilities deal by an additional 15% and Enrage’s duration is increased by 1 second. On a choice node with Frenzied Enrage. Bladestorm is now a choice node with Ravager. All existing Ravager sub-talents updated to work with both Ravager and Bladestorm. Wrath and Fury now increases the chance for Improved Raging Blow to reset Raging Blow’s cooldown by 10% while Enraged. Deft Experience no longer reduces Bloodthirst’s cooldown, instead it now increases Bloodthirst’s chance to trigger Enrage by 2% per point. Tenderize no longer increases the duration of Enrage. Frenzied Flurry has been removed, its effects have been added to Single-Minded Fury. The following talents have been removed: Raging Armaments Annihilator Storm of Swords Developer’s note: Annihilator and Sword of Swords provided an option for Fury players who wanted a lower “actions per minute” playstyle. However, we’re not happy with how they changed which abilities warriors used in their rotations. We are instead providing Powerful Enrage as a new option for a slower playstyle that synergizes with Fury’s rotation and flavor. Protection Whirlwind base Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 30). Whirlwind damage reduced by 33%. Rend base Rage cost reduced to 20 (was 30). DYNAMIC FLIGHT
      440+ Flying Mounts will feature Dynamic Flight active abilities, faster speeds, and new animations in The War Within. Known Issue: Dragonriding talent panel is not available outside of Dragon Isles. To access the talents, paste this command into the chat box: /run DragonridingPanelSkillsButtonMixin:OnClick() ITEMS
      The item levels of leveling gear have been adjusted to be rewarded at an appropriate item level through level 70. Developer’s note: With this adjustment the leveling content should feel easier for all players as the items being rewarded will be a higher item level. All leveling items will follow this high item level cadence except for heirlooms. Heirlooms still have the advantage of increasing their item level as the wielder levels. In general, this should make leveling a more fluid and pleasant experience! The sell value of the Elegant Canvas Brush has been reduced to 100 gold. PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
      DRUID Call of the Elder Druid has been removed from PvP talents and is now a Restoration Druid talent. PALADIN Holy Barrier Faith is now 50% more effective in PvP combat (was 100%). PROFESSIONS
      Developer’s note: 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, tell their customers that they would recraft an item an indeterminate number of times, and summarily charge a specific price per recraft until their Inspiration struck. So, in The War Within, we’re removing Inspiration. In its place, we have a new ability for crafters to utilize: Concentration and a new stat: Ingenuity. Learn more about this change in the Professions Update: Concentration in The War Within feedback thread. New Ability: Concentration – Concentration is a resource that you have a separate pool of per crafting profession. It represents your ability to heavily focus on your recipes and exceed your normal capabilities. You choose when you want to Concentrate using a button within the crafting window, empowering your next craft(s). Doing so will cause the craft to automatically reach the next level of quality, no questions asked. New Stat: Ingenuity – You have a chance to have an ingenious breakthrough when you Concentrate on a craft, refunding all Concentration spent. ALCHEMY Alchemy is in a near-complete state, beyond some polish and tuning work that will likely happen in broad strokes across all professions. Most, if not all recipes should be able to be crafted and utilized, and the specialization tree should be largely reflective of the final experience; all subject to feedback of course. Your good friend Instructaur and his cohort can supply you with the training and materials needed to experiment, and the items you make should be functional and ready for testing. Some additional notes: Phials have been rebranded to be profession effects only, retaining the 30m extendable duration. Flasks make a return with 1h durations! As a quality of life bonus, you can now have phials and flasks active at the same time. Experimentation has been carried forward from Dragonflight but with some adjustments in effort to mitigate frustration while keeping with the theme. You now select which herb to experiment with, and can only discover recipes that utilize that particular herb. Experimentation now has two forms: A repeatable version that you can do with short lockouts (which can be bypassed with Formulated Courage), and a time-gated one that boasts a much higher chance at recipe discoveries. Transmutation has been significantly expanded with a system called Thaumaturgy. This is a side component of Alchemy that boasts extra complexity which allows you to regularly transmute a variety of reagents found on Khaz Algar into other forms. While this process is highly destructive, specializations and clever choices in your inputs will ultimately bring you closer to transmuting Blasphemite, the elusive and highly coveted meta gem that is sure to catch the eye of aspiring Jewelcrafting entrepreneurs. Please take a look at the Thaumaturgy specialization tab and experiment with this feature with and without specializations and let us know how it feels! Specializations now focus heavily on the herbs of Khaz Algar, so it is wise to evaluate the recipe list to determine which recipes appeal to you the most. Specializations for all herbs on a recipe contribute to the final rolls associated with them. As a reminder, recipe difficulty tuning will happen in a later pass but you can nonetheless engage with this mechanic to observe their impact on crafts. BLACKSMITHING Specializations are in and ready for players to dissect! Developer’s note: While the hookups aren’t fully implemented, I’m hoping the Everburning Forge Specialization catches player’s attention as a way to inject a helping of profession stats deterministically. ENCHANTING In this Alpha build, Enchanting has been enabled and can be trained by Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Dragonflight enchantments worked well to provide players with choices and customization, so many of the available options will look familiar in The War Within. There is a new host of weapon enchants available, as well as the new Cursed ring enchants as selectable options. Weapon Oils have also made a return, and Enchanting has an additional set of fun consumables to market to other players! The vast majority of the enchants have been implemented, but some of them are still in progress. Developer’s note: None of the enchants have been tuned yet, a baseline tuning will be done in the near future. Some of the specializations include: Designated Disenchanter Master your fundamental disenchanting rituals, maximizing the quality of reagents you create when destroying items. You will gain +1 Skill per point in this Specialization when disenchanting. Supplementary Shattering Learn the art of shattering the magical essences of Khaz Algar, temporarily empowering your Resourcefulness, Multicraft, and Ingenuity. Additionally, your studies will grant you +1 Ingenuity per point in this Specialization. FISHING In this alpha build, the waters around Khaz Algar are populated with a single fish while we worked out a few updates to the ecosystem. However, fellow Anglers will notice a change in their Fishing Journal, namely Fishing Accessories! Your existing Fishing Gear from the past will lose all Fishing stats and converting them to Fishing Accessories will permanently exchange the combat stats for the proper Fishing-related bonuses. Developer’s note: We’re strictly looking out for any friction with this conversion, items we might have missed, or critical issues to fix before this is fully live. HERBALISM In this Alpha build, Herbalism has been enabled and can be trained by Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Specializations for herbalism have been fully implemented, and in addition to some of the fan favorites, we also have some new abilities and bonuses that you can specialize into. Finally, herbs are growing all over the Isle of Dorn, including ones that have been affected by the magics present on Khaz Algar. As always, we appreciate your time and feedback! The base idea behind Herbalism specializations in The War Within is the same as Dragonflight, but there have been changes and additions to some of the bonuses. The Botany specialization now has a Mulching sub-specialization, which allows you to make potent magical mulch and learn to utilize your Green Thumb. Mulching allows you to consume some of the common herb, Mycobloom, to make a consumable Mulch that gives you a large Finesse bonus to the next herb you gather. Green Thumb, also learned from the Mulching tree, is an activatable cooldown that doubles the amount of herbs you receive from the next herb you gather. JEWELCRAFTING Dragonflight Jewelcrafters will feel right at home with the updates in War Within! A familiar lineup of recipes await your discovery, but with a variety of new cantrips and an updated set of gems. We felt that Jewelcrafting’s structure, particularly its vast array of gem choices, fit well under the new profession system and wanted bring that with us into the new expansion. Item quality has been removed from raw gems and there is only one tier instead of two. Enjoy the reclaimed inventory space! The same lineup of gem options and their associated stats has been carried forward. For reference: Amber: Stamina Emerald: Haste Onyx: Mastery Ruby: Critical Strike Sapphire: Versatility Weighted hybrid combinations of all of the above! Ordinary hybrid gem cuts are now entirely sourced through Specializations rather than distributed across various parts of the game, in any order you choose. Knowing your customers and the gaps in the market is critical for maximizing your profits – but eventually all invested Jewelcrafters will be able to acquire all of the gems as usual. LEATHERWORKING Leatherworkers, your profession is available to be trained by Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind! The general structure of Leatherworking remains the same as in Dragonflight, crafting a variety of armor pieces for both Leather and Mail wearers. Leatherworkers will also find that they have a new market in reagents with the ability to craft Weapon Grip Wraps and Armor Banding that is used in the high-level crafts of other Professions. We’ve also removed the specialization that granted general Skill across the board, so it should be clearer what specializations you need to focus on if you want to get max quality with a particular recipe. The majority of the recipes are implemented, but a couple of the embellished pieces aren’t implemented. Please look for them to be fully functional in the near future! Developer’s note: None of the effects have been tuned yet. Values related to stats bonuses, damage, or healing are very likely to change as the Alpha moves forward. The majority of specializations are implemented as well, except for a couple of sub-specializations within the Learned Leatherworker tree. Some of the specializations include: Learned Leatherworker Master your Leatherworking fundamentals to increase your reagent efficiency, ability to Concentrate, general stitchwork, and production process. This specialization tree is all about increasing your secondary crafting stats and increasing the efficacy of their effects. Flawless Fortes Master the techniques of Khaz Algar to craft specialty items beyond that of standard armor. This specialization tree focuses on improving your crafting capabilities for embellished armor pieces, reagents, armor kits, and profession gear. QUESTS
      The War Within campaign chapters and local stories. USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY
      Spellbook has been redesigned and moved to the same window as Talents and Specializations. Professions now has its own micromenu button. Mount Journal now has a button called Switch Flight Style that lets you switch between steady flight (normal flying) and Dynamic Flight. NEW OPTIONS Option to replace spiders with alternative creatures. This doesn’t affect gameplay or difficulty. Option under Accessibility > General > Arachnophobia Mode. Icon can be used to mark your player character for visibility. Option under Accessibility > General > Self Highlight. Highlight your character’s silhouette when blocked by objects in game. Option under Gameplay > Combat > Show Silhouette when Obstructed. OBJECTIVE TRACKER Updated Objective Tracker art. Minimize settings are now on a new top level quest tracker header. New animations on headers and objectives. Icons for in progress quests have been updated. Objective Tracker text size can be adjusted with Edit Mode. Developer’s note: This will only apply for headers and most text lines in the tracker. Added new 3D quest bangs and icons: Meta quests Repeatable quests Campaign trivial quests Flight map icons have been updated. Flightmaster icon and bang has been updated.
    • By Staff
      Warbands are pretty great and solve a lot of issues players have had in previous expansions, but "just" making most things account-wide and offering a separate bank, among other things, wasn't enough! 
      As MrGM found out, there's a new set of achievements aimed at helping players with alts, as each character you get to level 80 (the new maximum in the expansion) will give you a 5% experience boost for the next characters you level. The  Warband Mentors: The War Within set of achievements even stacks up to 5 times, so each subsequent character you get to 80 will increase the buff, all the way to 25%! The buff is Warband-wide, so any character you level after that will get the buff.

      Making it easier to level alts is always a welcome change, and this is really making us love Warbands even more! 
    • By Staff
      Here's another nice addition to the game coming in the new expansion, with some really interesting mole mounts being added! Keyboardturn found all their variations and their mount special animations as well, so let's take a look. 
      And here's the mount special:

      Unfortunately ground mounts are getting very out-classed with the Dynamic Riding feature, but we're still hoping for that rumored dynamic ground mounts feature! Perhaps these could dig down and move below ground?
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