MMO-Champion Feed - Legendary Catch Up, Jan 5 Hotfixes, Balance and Assassination Changes, DLC #614

**MMO-Champion** · January 6, 2018

The Darkening of Tristram is Live!

Silence or Bust: How Cubelock Slowed the Meta

Patch 7.3.5 PTR - Build 25807
A small build hit the PTR today, adding an item that allows players to collect 175 x Wakening Essence to turn in for a legendary item.

New Loading Screen

Spell Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Raid & Dungeon Abilities

Burning Breath Breaths a wide line of fire, inflicting ~~15,200 to 16,800~~ 34,300 to 38,000 Fire Damage. 40 yd range. Instant.
Ring of Fire ~~Deals 1,200~~ Deals 3,000 Fire damage every 1 seconds. 100 yd range. Instant.
Whirling Saber Noura throws a flaming sword towards a random player, inflicting 2,000,000 Fire damage upon landing. The blade then begins to spin and return to Noura, inflicting 4,000,000 Fire damage every ~~1 sec~~ second to all nearby enemies as it moves. Instant.
Whirling Saber Noura throws a flaming sword towards a random player, inflicting 2,000,000 Fire damage upon landing. The blade then begins to spin and return to Noura, inflicting 4,000,000 Fire damage every ~~1 sec~~ second to all nearby enemies as it moves. 150 yd range. Instant.

Strings Changes

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

CHARACTER_UPGRADE_UNREVOKE_CHARACTER_FINISH_LABEL (New) - Unlock
CLASS_TRIAL_CHOOSE_BOOST_LOGOUT_PROMPT_TEXT (New) - To apply this Character Boost, log out to the character select screen.

PTR Development Notes - Build 25807

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)

Hi all!

Today's PTR update includes a new method for acquiring Legendary items: the Purified Titan Essence. This item can be purchased from Arcanomancer Vridiel in Dalaran in exchange for 175 Wakening Essences.

When used, the Purified Titan Essence will immediately grant a Legion Legendary item appropriate for your specialization. Note that this item is bind on pickup, and that the Legendary item granted by the Purified Titan Essence does not affect your chance to earn a Legendary through other methods.

Additionally, the Awoken Titan Essence used to upgrade Legendary items to item level 1000 is now sold by Arcanomancer Vridiel as a vendor item, rather than as a quest reward, for the same total cost (50 Wakening Essence). The quest will no longer be offered, but can be turned in if your character already has it active.

Patch 7.3.2 Hotfixes - January 5

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Classes

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
- Restoration
  - Eonar's Verdant Embrance (from Eonar's Compassion) is now correctly activated by Germination.
Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
- Assassination
  - Fixed an issue where Poisoned Knife could apply poisons twice.
  - Fixed an issue where Deadly Poison could retain Nightstalker's damage bonus until Deadly Poison fell off the target.

Dungeons and Raids

Antorus, The Burning Throne
- Eonar the Life Binder
  - Eonar should now properly award credit towards the Forbidden Descent achievement in Raid Finder difficulty.
  - Eonar will now always successfully deal damage to the Paraxis when completing a cast of Life Force.
- Coven of Shivarra
  - Fixed an issue that could cause Whirling Blades to deal damage far more rapidly than intended.

Player versus Player

Temple of Kotmogu
- Leywoven Flying Carpet can no longer be used to drop Orbs of Power.

Balance Druid and Assassination Rogue January 9th Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Assassination and Balance Rotation Adjustments on Tuesday
In recent weeks, we’ve seen the rise of a pair of unusual builds for Assassination Rogues and Balance Druids, both of which end up abandoning core abilities like Solar Wrath, Lunar Strike, and Mutilate in favor of Moonfire and Fan of Knives spam. While player ingenuity often devises interesting and unexpected ways of optimizing performance, in this case the resulting gameplay became one-dimensional, and we’ve heard feedback to that effect.

As a result, with the upcoming weekly resets in each region, starting on Tuesday, January 9, we’ll be making some targeted changes to reinforce the core rotational abilities of these two specializations, with only a minimal effect on overall balance:

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

Balance
- Wax and Wane (Artifact trait) damage bonus per stack reduced to 6% (was 25%).
- Lunar Strike damage increased by 8%.
- Solar Wrath damage increased by 8%.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

Assassination
- Mutilate damage increased by 20%.
- Balanced Blades (Artifact trait) bonus increased to 4% per point (was 2% per point).
- Poison Knives (Artifact trait) reduced to 3% per point (was 4% per point).
- Deadly Poison triggered instant damage increased by 15%.

Thank you very much for all of your feedback. I can't overstate how much we appreciate the valuable class discussion taking place here and elsewhere

This Week in WoW History
We're taking a look back at old MMO-Champion posts and World of Warcraft news that occurred during this time in previous years.

Patch 4.3.2
The test realms saw this patch pop up in 2012, and a few interesting additions were found. The popular 64 Bit Game Client was added in a build called “test x86”, and while this patch was only supposed to bring small bug fixes, it was also found that three new items made it into the game. The Feldrake, Eye of the Legion, and Demon Hunter’s Aspect were all found and speculated to become TCG items.

Patch 5.2 The Thunder King
This content Patch brought a few additions to the game. A small update to the Transmog system allowed players to transmog similar weapon styles, such as Swords into Daggers. Warlock Island was also found, and speculated that it would be used during the Green Fire Warlock specific questline. This patch also added new Heirloom items which scaled to level 85, along with a new zone called Isle of Giants.

Time for an Item Level Squish
The Warlords of Draenor Item Level Squish was intended to bring the numbers of players health, damage, but especially that of bosses to a lower number. The last boss of Siege of Orgrimmar Mythic, was designed to heal to full health several times, because the game engine could not handle a number large enough to have his health progress as a regular boss would. It was also made very clear that this item level squish would not affect players clearing older content, such as raids for transmog, because everything will be scaled accordingly.

Warlords of Draenor Cinematic
A special event was held to reveal the cinematic trailer to the newest WoW expansion. Streamers, YouTubers, and Blizzard employees were all at this event, revealing the introduction cinematic, which gave us some insight into the Horde on the world of Draenor. This expansion would take place years in the past, when Gul’dan tried to corrupt the Orcs of Draenor with fel, however many resisted to preserve their freedom.

Warcraft in China
The Warcraft movie mall tour in China was the largest exhibition mounted for this new film. With over 150 props from the movie, visitors had the opportunity to see statues, Orc huts, and many more items during the tour. This was in an attempt to appeal to the Chinese audience, who ended up making up half of the gross total ($220.8 million) after the release.

Activision Blizzard Acquires MLG Assets
Major League Gaming was once the largest esports organizers in North America. After years of innovating the esports scene, the emergence of other organizers such as ESL put MLG in a tough spot with multiple competitors. This caused some financial struggles causing them to sell all assets to Activision Blizzard for $46 million. The platform was, and is still used to host WoW tournaments, and the newly formed Overwatch League, among others.

Diablo 20th Anniversary
The Diablo franchise celebrated its 20th Anniversary early 2017. To celebrate this event, a new dungeon was added to Diablo III. This new area was designed in the style of Diablo I, with graphics, movement, and sound being filtered to capture the feel of the game. This event was also celebrated in WoW, where killing a Treasure Goblin would allow players to reach The Secret Cow Level, and kill the Cow King for some Diablo referenced loot.

Heroes of the Storm - Blaze, New Skins, and More!
Blaze is on the PTR and new skins, sprays, and more are on the way!