World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies (2024)

In this week’s Shadowlands build, Death’s Due has been updated and its buff and debuffs are no longer applied each time it deals damage.

Now your Heart Strike, Scourge Strike, and Obliterate apply Death’s Due to the target, reducing the damage they deal to you and increasing your Strength by the same amount. The duration of the buff/debuff has also been reduced and the maximum amount of stacks has been reduced to 8.

In addition to these changes, Death’s Due has a unique bonus for Frost that allows their Obliterate to hit 1 additional target while they stay within Death’s Due.

These changes to Death’s Due are aimed at making it a little more rotation-impactful, rather than just a passive bonus when casting it, while making it more balanced against the other Covenant choices.

This week’s Shadowlands builds come with a tuning pass to each of the Demon Hunter Covenant abilities.

The Hunt had recently been redesigned to have a lower cooldown DoT application to 5 targets, and the removal of the teleport and fury generation bonus. We’ve since the tuned the ability to be more competitive with Sinful Brand.
Similarly, Elysian Decree has had its damage increased significantly.

While we like the thematic texture of Fodder to the Flame, we’ve observed your feedback about the way it ties a very mobile class to a specific area. We think this could be an interesting tradeoff, but the benefits of standing in the pool of demon blood need to be compelling.

Stay tuned as we iterate on this idea further.

The Kyrian Covenant ability Resonating Arrow has received several changes in this week’s Shadowlands update. The radius has been increased, which should make it easier to use against targets who are near the pillars in maps such as Nagrand Arena. Additionally, when a target leaves the Resonating Arrow area, the effect that allows you to ignore line of sight towards them will last for an additional 4 seconds.

Flayed Shot has had a minor update that makes the bonus Kill Shot no longer cost any Focus, so it can be used more freely.

We’ve implemented many bug fixes to Death Chakram, and it will no longer chain to targets that are under crowd control effects that break upon taking damage.

The design of Wild Spirits has been simplified quite a bit. Now, when you cast the ability, all targets in the area now take some immediate Nature damage. Any ability you use, including Kill Command, will now cause up to 5 targets in the area to take extra Nature damage. This extra Nature damage will ignore targets that are currently affected by crowd control effects that break upon taking damage. There is no longer any difference in behavior when using single target versus area damage with this ability.

In this week’s Shadowlands build, Mirrors of Torment has been updated with new functionality that grants you Brain Freeze, Fire Blast cooldown reduction, or Mana when a mirror is consumed based on your spec.

Mirrors of Torment will also now proc from auto attacks, but can only occur once every 6 seconds.

The goal with these changes is to give Mirrors of Torment a little more consistent PvE throughput and not just being a niche PvP ability for those Mages looking to join the Venthyr.

Hello, Monks! We have a slate of changes and updates in this week’s Beta build.

Changes

• Energizing Elixir has been removed from the global cooldown.
• Spinning Crane Kick’s damage is now increased by up to 6 unique targets (was 5) struck by Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick, or Rising Sun Kick, up to 60% damage (was 50% damage).
• Haste now affects the periodic of Crackling Tiger Lightning.
• Weapons of Order has been redesigned for Windwalker Monks. Now, for the next 30 seconds, your Mastery is increased by 13%. Additionally, 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.
• Faeline Stomp now deals Nature damage (or heals if Mistweaver) to targets in front of the Monk when cast and continues to deal additional damage to targets caught in the Faelines.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Rising Sun Kick and Whirling Dragon Punch were not contributing to Xuen’s Empowered Lightning.
• Rising Sun Kick Rank 2 has been restored and increases the damage of Rising Sun Kick by 70%.

Works in Progress

We’re aware of balance concerns Windwalker Monks have about dual wield and 2 handed weapons. We’re considering different options to address the problem, and we’ll have more to share in the future. We’re also aware of many bugs related to Storm, Earth and Fire, particularly in relation to other spells. We’re making every effort to improve the reliability of this ability.

Recently, we changed Fae Guardians to apply to your selected target on cast, to help address some usability problems. In this most recent Shadowlands build, there is now also a conduit available that allows you to replicate additional Faeries onto your party. This redesigned conduit is aimed at addressing the feedback (particularly from Discipline and Holy Priests) that it feels punishing to cast healing spells while the Faeries are active.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve also added some notable changes to the Shadow priest.

In some situations, the Priest may want to spend Insanity by casting two Devouring Plagues on the same target in a short time. This can cause a situation where damage in the DoT can be wasted. To address this, we’ve made a change where subsequent Devouring Plagues will cause its damage over time effect to add into the existing DoT. Players may notice how this functionality is similar to the Mage Ignite mechanic.

We’re also introducing a new talent to replace Legacy of the Void: Hungering Void. The intent with this talent similar to Legacy of the Void – to be ideal in situations where the Priest focuses on a single target.

Additionally, we’re changing Void Torrent to apply Devouring Plague when cast, rather than refreshing the existing Devouring Plague on the target.

We really appreciate your thoughts and feedback – and thank you for testing!

With updates coming soon to the Shadowlands Beta, we’re updating the Venthyr ability for rogues. It will now be called Flagellation (was previously Slaughter).

Flagellation is an instant cast with a 25 second cooldown that starts once Flagellation is removed from the target. The rogue lashes the target with Anima 3 times, dealing Shadow damage and applying a debuff for 45 seconds that causes an additional lash for each Combo Point you spend. Once the target has been lashed at least 25 times, reactivating Flagellation cleanses their torment and increases your Mastery by 10% for 25 seconds.

We’re looking forward to your feedback on this, once you’ve had a chance to test it out!

Hello! We have some updates in this week’s Shadowlands build.

Chain Harvest will now ignore targets that are under crowd control effects that break upon taking damage for the portion of it that deals damage to enemies.

Fae Transfusion has had the number of targets it heals reduced from 8 to 4 to match the number of targets to which the ability deals damage. The damage done by Fae Tranfusion will now be evenly split to, up to 4 targets, and Enhancement Shaman specifically will receive a stack of Maelstrom Weapon for fully channeling the ability.

Primordial Wave has been changed to be an instant cast ability, which should make the ability much easier to use in all situations, and has received a number of bug fixes.

This week, Soul Rot has had its health cost removed, while retaining a minor mana cost. Additionally, the primary target of your Soul Rot will now take increased damage compared to the secondary targets.

Decimating Bolt has been tweaked to help balance out some talent choices that could greatly swing the value of this ability. For Affliction Warlocks with Drain Soul talented, Decimating Bolt will now only affect your next Drain Soul (was previously your next three). Destruction Warlocks with Fire and Brimstone chosen will have the bonus damage value reduced. For Demonology Warlocks, the buff has been altered to affect your next Shadow Bolt or Demonbolt (rather than just Shadow Bolt).

In an upcoming build, the buff will only interact with Demonbolt for Demonology Warlocks.

Hello.

In our latest updates to Shadowlands, Colossus Smash and Warbreaker (if talented) will apply Deep Wounds from Arms Warrior’s Mastery. This change is aimed primarily at giving Arms an additional option for applying Deep Wounds in multi-target scenarios via Warbreaker, without having to rely solely on Bladestorm and Cleave (if talented), and to have Deep Wounds be reliably applied to both Colossus Smash targets when Sweeping Strikes is active.

This change should be testable, but will not yet be reflected in the Deep Wounds tooltip.