Massive MoP Classic Beta Notes: Class Changes, Celestial Dungeons and More

Today we’ve updated the Mists of Pandaria Classic Beta with lots of changes!

Weekend Raid Testing

In our eighth week of Beta, It’s finally time to take on our remaining 2 early-expansion raids:

• Delve into the rotting home of the Klaxxi and confront their sha-tainted queen in the Heart of Fear.
• Chase the Sha of Fear to the Terrace of Endless Spring, where it has caused the guardians to devolve into fits of terror. Defeat it to restore peace to this sacred place.

Raid Testing Schedule

• Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs raid testing will begin on Friday, June 13 at 1:00 p.m. PDT and end on Monday, June 16 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.
• Level 90 template characters will be available for the raid, with item level 463 gear (Heroic Dungeon rewards).
• Vendors are available in the following locations:
  • Shrine of Two Moons – The Golden Terrace
  • Shrine of Seven Stars – The Summer Terrace
  • Orgrimmar – Valley of Strength
  • Stormwind – Trade District
• Vendors include:
  • Instructaur, to teach you max-level professions.
  • Flaskataur, for all of your flask, potion, enchant, and gem needs.
  • Glyphtaur, to acquire your glyphs.
  • Dungeontaur, to acquire Heroic Pandaria dungeon loot (including rare and epic pieces) and reputation tokens for the major Pandaria factions.
  • Donjon Rade, to teleport you to the raid.

Celestial Dungeons

Celestial Dungeons is a new optional game mode that’s now available for testing. Please leave any feedback on this feature in FEEDBACK: Celestial Dungeons thread.

• Celestial Dungeons can only be entered by using the automated Group Finder tool, and they require a minimum item level of 435 to queue, the same as Heroic dungeons.
  • Developers’ notes: To get the intended difficulty experience, we’d appreciate your feedback running Celestial Dungeons with the Mists of Pandaria Classic Level 90 character templates.
• Upon entering a Celestial Dungeon, players will be greeted by the August Celestials. Speaking with a Celestial allows the player to ask for their assistance, granting the player unique powers based on which Celestial they interacted with.
• Each boss in Celestial Dungeons will drop 2x of a new currency, August Stone Fragment, per player. If players have defeated all of the other bosses in the dungeon, the final boss of each dungeon will drop an extra 3 August Stone Fragments.
• Running your first Celestial Dungeon of the day will grant an additional 4 August Stone Fragments.
• Every Celestial Dungeon after the first one of the day will grant an additional 2 August Stone Fragments.
• There is also a rotating daily quest for Celestial Dungeons that can be picked up from Challenger Soong or Challenger Wuli in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, for an additional 3 August Stone Fragments.
  • This daily quest will never be the same Celestial Dungeon 2 days in a row, and it will never be the same Dungeon as the Challenge Mode daily quest.
• The cap of how many August Stone Fragments a character can hold will be low at first but will increase with the release of each raid tier.
• The August Stone Fragment currency can be used to purchase items from the new NPC, Avatar of the August Celestials, in the Shrine of Two Moons and Shrine of Seven Stars.
• The original ‘Raid Finder’ items have been relabeled as ‘Celestial’ items.
  • For the remainder of this article, all instances or mentions of an item being ‘Celestial’ will be referring to the old ‘Raid Finder’ version of an item but with this new updated label.
• Celestial Dungeons also brings with them new Achievements to earn.
• Celestial Dungeons add various mechanics from bosses from the current raid tier to the dungeon encounters.
  • Developer’s notes: Aside from adding interesting mechanics and challenge to each dungeon, our intention is also to give newer players the chance to experience some of the current raid tier’s boss mechanics prior to entering the raids.
• Players can earn progress towards their Legendary questline with a chance of gaining Sigils of Power and Sigils of Wisdom drops from end bosses in Celestial Dungeons while on the associated quest.
• Players can earn progress towards their Legendary questline by defeating the Sha of Doubt and obtaining the Chimera of Doubt while on the associated quest.
  • Players can take the route of Doubt by declining Wrathion’s request to harness Fear.

To somewhat mimic how Raid Finder content was originally released, Celestial Dungeons will become available two weeks after the release of Mogu’shan Vaults. From there, two weeks after each raid is released, the Celestial Dungeon drops and the items on the Avatar of the August Celestials will update their tables to contain items from that raid. Upon first release, items able to be purchased include:

• All ‘Celestial’ items from Mogu’shan Vaults
• Satchel of Celestial Chance, containing a handful of Lesser Charms of Good Fortune and a chance at unreleased Mounts from the original Mists of Pandaria expansion
• Commendations of Service for Justice Points
• Valor Points

Once the Heart of Fear releases, no new items will be added to the vendor or Celestial Dungeons until two weeks after that raid has been released. Upon two weeks elapsing, items able to be purchased include:

• ‘Celestial’ Tier 14 Chest Tokens
• ‘Celestial’ Tier 14 Leg Tokens
• All ‘Celestial’ items from Heart of Fear
  • This includes ‘Celestial’ versions of the bind-on-equip wrist gear that can drop in the raid

Once the Terrace of Endless Spring releases, no new items will be added to the vendor or dungeons until two weeks after that raid has been released. Upon two weeks elapsing, items able to be purchased include:

• ‘Celestial’ Tier 14 Shoulder Tokens
• ‘Celestial’ Tier 14 Helm Tokens
• ‘Celestial’ Tier 14 Hand Tokens
• All ‘Celestial’ items from Terrace of Endless Spring
• When the Celestial Dungeons and vendor are updated for the Terrace of Endless Spring, players may purchase a bind-on-account Satchel of Stone Fragments.
  • This costs 10 August Stone Fragments, and when used, it is consumed and grants the holder 10 August Stone Fragments.
    • This will allow players to complete Celestial Dungeons on one character, while farming for another, or using that character to purchase transmog items for your account that your other cannot purchase from the vendor.
    • This will also allow players to transfer August Stone Fragments to their alts, who can then open them for the currency and spend them on Lesser Charms of Good Fortune, giving players a way to get their alts this currency.
      • As posted elsewhere, we have lowered the number of Lesser Charms of Good Fortune required for 3 Elder Charms of Good Fortune to 50 (was 90).

Class Updates

As we have been reviewing the class design in the original Mists of Pandaria, we recognize that classes changed, sometimes substantially, over the course of the expansion from phase to phase. For our Classic expansions, we start with the class design of the final patch of the original expansion, and for Mists of Pandaria Classic, that is patch 5.4.8. Unfortunately, classes in 5.4.8 were not designed with each phase’s content (such as the first raid tier) in mind, and with no changes to classes, this would leave some in an odd state in each phase. To address this, we have gone class by class, spec by spec, and made changes.

Many of these changes are simply reverting updates to classes that were made throughout the original Mists of Pandaria. In some cases, we also brought forward fixes to classes that were not made until the Warlords of Draenor expansion pre-patch. We have indicated the source of each adjustment at the end of each class change, noted below.

Some classes have also received an early buff, despite being expected to scale well as the Mists of Pandaria Classic expansion progresses. Our intent here is to give certain specs more power to balance them early in the expansion, but we already plan to revert many of the buffs made to these specs as the expansion progresses, and these specs naturally scale back up to their expected levels.

We have also made changes to the functionality of certain abilities, glyphs, and talents for specific specs within a class. To be clear, this means that if other specs within a class also have access to the same abilities, glyphs, or talents, they will only function in a changed manner for the spec specified.

Specifically regarding PvP: All of the following changes will have no impact on instanced PvP. These class changes, including changes to Masteries and Glyphs, will revert back to their 5.4.8 functionality when characters enter PvP instances, such as Arenas and Battlegrounds.

• The only exception to these changes reverting to their 5.4.8 state are changes that include items and set bonuses. Those changes will not revert upon entering PvP instances.

Finally, although we feel all classes will benefit from these changes throughout the expansion, we will continue to monitor the classes and update them further if necessary. We are particularly eager to see how they perform in the Beta, and most importantly, we are very much looking forward to your feedback. Please leave any feedback in the FEEDBACK: Mists of Pandaria Classic Class Changes thread.

• Druid
  • Balance
    • Moonkin Form’s increase to Nature and Arcane damage has been raised to 20% (was 10%). New
    • Shooting Stars will no longer split its chance to activate across multiple targets. 5.4 Revert
  • Feral
    • Ferals once again learn Nature’s Swiftness, but it cannot be used in Arenas or Battlegrounds (previously, Ferals did not learn or have access to Nature’s Swiftness). 5.4 Revert
  • Guardian
    • Maul’s Rage cost has been lowered to 20 (was 30). 6.0.2 Change
  • Restoration
    • Naturalist’s increase to healing has been raised to 15% (was 10%). New
• Hunter
  • General
    • The Sporebat pet’s Energizing Spores can now only be activated while inside of a Battleground or Arena. Sporebat’s now additionally know a new spell called Frenzying Spores. This is an active ability that grants the same effect as Serpent’s Swiftness but can only be activated outside of Battlegrounds and Arenas. New
      • Developers’ notes: Hunters perform well, but rather than nerfing them, we felt allowing them to cover less buffs was a better approach to opening up group compositions.
• Mage
  • Fire
    • Combustion % of Ignite’s tick damage per second raised to 50% (was 20%). 5.4 Revert
• Monk
  • Mistweaver
    • Teachings of the Monastery’s Crackling Jade Lightning damage bonus lowered to 25% (was 100%). New
    • Mana Tea’s mana return per charge increased to 5% (was 4%). New
    • Surging Mists cost lowered by 13%, moving its cost to 7.65% of base mana (was 8.8%). New
    • Rushing Jade Wind will now be canceled on the Mistweaver Monk when they enter Stance of the Wise Serpent. New
      • Developers’ notes: Players could enter Stance of the Fierce Tiger to activate Rushing Jade Wind for 40 Energy and then go back into Stance of the Wise Serpent without having to spend the mana cost of Rushing Jade Wind. We want to alleviate the Mistweaver mana concerns, but we don’t want the optimal way to play to be going into Tiger, casting Rushing Jade Wind, and going back into Serpent. This was considered optimal because of high mana costs and subpar mana return for Mistweaver. If those issues are solved, this should feel fine. If they aren’t, we’d rather revisit and reduce the cost of RJW/SCK for Mistweavers than perpetuate stance dancing. So no matter which way we sliced it, we didn’t want this work around to be the most efficient way to play.
    • Jab cost lowered by 25%, to 6% of base mana (was 8%). Partial 5.2 Revert
    • Enveloping Mists healing raised by 48%. 5.1 Revert
    • Eminence healing raised by 68%, moving it to a 42% conversion of damage to healing (was 25%). 5.2 Revert and 6.0.2 Change
      • Developers’ notes: Eminence benefits from the healing bonus granted by Stance of the Wise Serpent, so this translates to ~50% of damage dealt to healing.
    • Revival’s healing raised by 43%. 5.4 Revert
    • Glyph of Targeted Expulsion retains its original effects in PvP, but morphs to have the old effects from the previously removed Glyph of Uplift while outside of PvP instances. While not in a PvP instance: Glyph of Targeted Expulsion changes Uplift to no longer cost Chi, but instead cost 10% of base mana. 5.4 Revert and 5.2 Partial Revert
  • Windwalker
    • Mastery: Bottled Fury changed to increasing the damage of your Tigereye Brew by 0.2% per Mastery (was Mastery gives a chance to gain an additional charge of Tigereye Brew when you gain a charge of Tigereye Brew). 5.4 Revert
    • Tigereye Brew starts with 3.5% damage per stack, plus 1.6% from base Mastery (was 6% damage per stack unaffected by Mastery). 5.4 Revert and New
    • Tigereye Brew gains a charge after spending 3 Chi (was 4 Chi). 5.4 Revert
    • T15 Windwalker Monk 4 set bonus reverted to “You have a 10% chance to gain an additional charge of Tigereye Brew every time you gain a charge of Tigereye Brew while not inside an Arena or Battleground” (was “Increases the damage of your Tigereye Brew by 0.5% per stack consumed”). 5.4 Revert
• Paladin
  • Holy
    • Eternal Flame’s periodic healing lowered by 28%. 5.4 Revert
    • Eternal Flame’s Periodic can activate Illuminated Healing. 5.4 Revert
    • Illuminated Healing’s base value has been raised to 12% (was 10%). 5.3 Revert
  • Protection
    • The damage reduction from Sanctuary has been raised to 20% (was 15%). New
    • The shielding on Sacred Shield has been raised by 43%. 5.4 Revert
  • Retribution
    • Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judgment, Hammer of the Righteous, Hammer of Wrath, and Exorcism have all had their damage raised by 10%. New
    • Templar’s Verdict damage raised by 20%. 6.0.2 Change
• Priest
  • Talents
    • Divine Star and Halo now obey AoE cap rules (20 targets for damage, 6 targets for Healing before they start splitting the effect’s total numbers). 5.4 Revert andIssue Originally Moved to 6.0 Pre-Patch`
    • The maximum times Cascade can bounce has been lowered to 3 (was 4). 5.4 Revert
  • Discipline
    • Divine Aegis lowered to 80% of the Heal’s value (was 100%). New
    • T14 set bonus Penance cooldown lowered to 1 second (was 3). New
      • Developers’ notes: This bonus brings Penance to 8 seconds, like in the original 5.0.
    • Atonement healing from damage lowered to 70% (was 90%). 6.0.2 Change
    • Divine Star for Discipline Priests has had its healing lowered by 25%. 6.0.2 Change and 5.1 Partial Revert
    • Spirit Shell’s active duration raised by 50% to 15 seconds (was 10). 5.4 Revert
  • Shadow
    • Generates Shadow Orbs passively while outside of combat, arenas, and battlegrounds. New
    • Shadow Form’s damage increase has been raised to 30% (was 25%). New
• Rogue
  • General
    • Sinister Strike’s Energy cost lowered to 40 (was 50). 5.4 Revert, Buff
    • Sinister Strike’s weapon damage lowered to 192% (was 240%). Partial 5.4 Revert, Nerf
      • Developers’ notes: This overall is Sinister Strike’s cost and damage both lowered by 20%. This allows for more fluid gameplay with cycling Insight, and an overall buff.
  • Assassination
    • The damage increase from Assassin’s Resolve raised to 25% (was 20%). 5.4 Revert
  • Combat
    • Added a counter for Bandit’s Guile that will track your sinister strikes and revealing strikes, showing how close you are to gaining Insight. New
• Shaman
  • General
    • Healing Rain healing lowered by 25%. New
  • Talents
    • Healing Rain’s maximum duration through Conductivity lowered to 30 seconds (was 40). New
    • Ancestral Guidance’s healing and damage conversion lowered to 20% (was 60% for healing and 40% for damage). 6.0.2 Change
  • Elemental
    • Lightning Bolt damage raised by 10%. New
  • Enhancement
    • Stormstrike weapon damage raised to 450% (was 380%) 5.4 Revert
  • Restoration
    • Chain Heal’s fall off per target lowered to 20% (was 0%). 5.4 Partial Revert
    • Riptide mana cost raised by 15%. 5.4 Partial Revert
• Warlock
  • Affliction
    • Malefic Grasp damage raised by 50%. 5.4 Revert
    • The damage your Malefic Grasp causes your other DoTs to deal raised to 50% (was 30%). 5.4 Revert
    • Drain Soul damage raised by 50%. 5.4 Revert
    • The damage your Drain Soul causes your other DoTs to deal raised to 100% (was 60%). 5.4 Revert
  • Demonolgy
    • Wild Imp damage raised by 43%. 5.4 Revert
    • The number of Imps summoned by Glyph of Imp Swarm raised to 5 (was 4). 5.4 Revert
    • Hellfire and Immolation Aura damage raised by 25%. 5.4 Revert
    • Chaos Wave damage raised by 50%. 5.4 Revert
  • Glyphs
    • Glyph of Eternal Resolve retains its original effects in PvP, but morphs to have the old effects from the previously removed Glyph of Everlasting Affliction while outside of PvP instances. While not in a PvP instance: Glyph of Eternal Resolve now increases the duration of the damage over time spells associated with the old Glyph of Everlasting Affliction by 50%, but decreases their damage by 20%. 5.4 Revert
• Warrior
  • General
    • Absorbing damage or taking damage while in Berserker Stance now grants the Warrior Rage (previously, only taking damage to your health bar granted Rage). New
  • Fury
    • Crazed Berserker auto attack damage increase has been raised to 15% (was 10%). New
    • Crazed Berserker offhand damage increase has been raised to 30% (was 25%). New
    • The Duration of Berserker Rage and Enrage have been raised by 33%, to 8 seconds (was 6). New