Season of Discovery has been released on new WoW Classic servers for a couple of weeks and already has a lot of updates, edits and fixes. Players can learn about them from the almost daily patch notes. Major differences from WoW Classic, Season of Discovery brought to the game, relate to new mechanics, such as runes and powers they gave to characters and PvP system and zone changes. Ashenval comes to Season in the form of an endgame Phase 1 location, being a major PvP zone and area in which revamped from the dungeon raid is located.
And newly released content is what developers target to balance besides old content that needs to be adjusted to the realities of SoD Phases. In this topic, we overview all the Patch Notes WoW devs had time to release since the launch of Season of Discovery.
The main changes that do not affect gameplay directly, Phase 1 of SoD brought into the game, are changes to the server structure. At the launch of Season of Discovery, Blizzard created several realms in EU and US, some of which could not handle the influx of players. Two of them, Living Flame and Lone Wolf, were locked for new character creation, leading to Chaos Bolt’s opening – a new PvP realm. It’s always nice to see when a company is working on supporting the player base and maintaining servers’ capacity.
Gameplay changes are primarily based on what Season of Discovery brought to WoW Classic, namely the PvP system and the rules in the open PvP zone – Ashenvale, character development up to 25 level and all associated with it, the balance of drop items, and of course class changes.
Concerning the PvP system, the main changes and fixes were about ranking. In Phase 1, the rank cap a player character can achieve is only 3 PvP rank – Sergeant. Ashenval, as the PvP zone, is subject to balance adjustments and restrictions to improve the open PvP zones and events system in future Phases of Season of Discovery. The changes already introduced in the game include:
Phase one in SoD brought some great equipment to the game, but there are still symbolic WoW Classic items, unaffected by Patch notes, that players choose to farm instead of new items. Despite being quite challenging to get them, items could be obtained before a character was able to use them, so some skillful players farmed them even on Classic Hardcore. WoW developers anticipated this situation, blocked this possibility and restricted Tidal Charm and Arena Master/Grandmaster trinkets from dropping in Phase One. Also, to prevent abuse, Blizzard prohibited players from looting chests in later SoD Phases locations.
The main innovations in WoW Season of Discovery regarding the balance of classes, and therefore those that are subject to fixes and patching, are new spells derived from runes. These abilities allowed characters to have new PvE roles and improved not working properly in the WoW Classic.
Improved specs are Protection Paladin, who has been given the ability to taunt opponents, Enhancement Shaman, who finally can tank, thanks to his runes, Balance Druid, who is now a real Boomkin and no longer a dead weight in a party and a properly working with later expansions mechanics Shadow Priest. New roles have been given to Mage, whose Arcane Spec can actually heal now, Combat Rogue and Demonology Warlock, who became tanks, which never happened in any WoW expansion.
Druids so far got only one patch note change, pertaining to the primary spell added to WoW Season of Discovery for Balance specialization – Starsurge, and it’s massive. Starsurge got a damage increase by 182%, making this ability the strongest GCD (global cooldown), bypassing even Starfire, almost 2x reduced cooldown, from 10 to 6 seconds and 3x lowered manacost, from 3 to 1% of base mana. This upgrade is the strongest one-spell boost among all the classes and gets the Druid community pretty much hyped about it.
“Druids have many discussions as touching the stars and their movement, the size of the universe, the order of nature, the strength and the powers” © Gaius Julius Caesar
Hunters find themselves on the other side of the Blizzard fix list and taking the honorable first place by the number of balance edits in patch notes. Flanking Strike on SoD launch worked incorrectly: was unaffected by combat modifiers and Hunter’s attack power, spell’s debuff could be prevented. Those bugs were fixed, and now the ability also requires a weapon equipped by Hunter. Pets now do not scale with Hunter’sHunter’s spell damage but gain from AP, equalizing melee with caster pets, who were formerly stronger, and the amount of armor (from 45 to 30%) and stamina (from 45 to 20%) pets get from its master has been reduced. Was balanced Scorpid Poison, which now properly distributes damage between poison stacks, and Chimera Shot whose damage was reduced to 85% of weapon damage. Aspect of the Lion now treats it as an aura and allows Hunter to use another Aspect with it. Explosive shot was reworked, and the ability’s damage took a “dramatic” reduction, but now it’s an AOE ability, hitting all targets besides the main one in 8y range. These balance updates make Hunter more variable and his pets more efficient, so players couldn’t be afraid of John Wick’s dog situation.
“Who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?” © John L. Lewis
At the launch of Season of Discovery, Mages were considered the most broken class in WoW with their new heal abilities, amplified by damage Mage doing, so the first fix out of patch notes they had was decreasing healing from Arcane Explosion damage by 80%. This, in theory, should have prevented 5-Mage parties from speedrunning dungeons, overhealing themselves from damage. But it didn’t work out because those Houdini spec-ops anyway were pulling out a disappearance act with every enemy in sight. Poor bosses shouldn’t have time to chill then, thought SoD developers, and start empowering Mages further: was improved Temporal Beacon, which now also heals from wands with an arcane type of damage, and Mass Regeneration radius was expanded from 15 to 30 yards. There were fixed bugs with Living Flame, which continued to work even if the rune was unequipped, and interaction between Regeneration spells and Arcane Blast consumption.
“Magic is one of the oldest art forms that exist” © David Blaine
Everybody knows: Paladin is a perfect class, but players who are maining Paladin may cast some holy wars beside the game. To prevent this, Blizzard decided to make changes only if they were utterly necessary, and so far, it has yet to be noticed. Updates bring us only one mention about holy warriors, and it’s a fix to the Seal of Martyrdom, which affected nearby allies, regardless of whether they were in a party or not, giving them mana. If it works – do not touch it.
“Nobody expects the Stormwind inquisition” © Monty Python
Half of the priest’s rune abilities introduced in Phase 1 of Season of Discovery belong to Shadow spec, and those are the ones being updated in the patch notes. Initially, the spells didn’t change the gameplay of Shadow Priest enough for him to take his niche, so they had to be improved. Thus, Priest gained a damage increase of Homunculi by 100% and Void Plague by 200%. Twisted Faith passive also received a buff: damage from Mind Blast and Mind Flay now increases by 50% instead of 20 on targets affected by Shadow Word: Pain. In summary, both Blizzard and Cthulhu fanboys were satisfied, so these buffs proved to be a win-win situation.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” © Barzai the Wise
Rogues was mentioned in the Patch Notes several times, and it’s mainly about the Saber Slash balancing. This spell, after fixes, maintains bleed on the target from different Rogues separately (as well as Deadly Poison from Deadly Brew rune ability), damage from Saber Slash if correctly considers Mangle debuff and bleed on target, and the ability now working perfectly with Remorseless Attack, consuming it (as well as Shiv and Main Gauche). Other fixes relate to minor issues like wrong descriptions, etc.
“Assassin? That sounds so exotic. I was just a murderer.” © The Iceman
Shamans, according to the latest WoW updates, got quite an upgrade lately. Firstly, the biggest improvement received Lava Lash spell: the damage was increased by 50% (from 100 to 150%), and its mana cost decreased from 4 to 1% of base mana. Overload ability received increased proc chance from 33 to 50% and Dual Wield Specialization, in addition to original characteristics, got a 10% hit rate stat while dual-wielding. Healing Rain previously could interrupt an auto-attack timer and Shamanistic Rage was granting mana regardless of being in a group, so both those bugs were fixed. Also, fixed the invisible rune of the Earth Shield bug in a quest to obtain it.
“Windfury, into the mace!” © Yoh Asakura
Warriors and Warlocks from the start of Season of Discovery didn’t receive any changes in Patch notes, so WoW devs supposedly imply those classes have no issues. We know a few, like Warrior’s situation with losing Overpower procs or Warlock pet’s summoning HP problem. But we hope, subsequent SoD Patch Notes will fix all the minor, and not so minor, issues.
So far, little is known about upcoming Patch News related to Season of Discovery Phase 2. Most of the info gamers could find about the upcoming Phase of Season of Discovery is merely a speculation, but we rely on official information and can provide our readers with all we know for today:
Listed points are only from official news WoW developers brought to gamers, but we are looking forward to every piece of information about World of Warcraft Classic: Season of Discovery.
