Okay, we got the Warcraft news over the last few days: brand new clash changes that are surely going to make some of you happy, even more changes and updates to professions like Alchemy, major discussions on topics such as raiding, and new lore inside a season of Discovery, and so much more.

Introduction to Recent Updates

Okay, diving right into the good stuff. Of course, as we start heading into phase three deeper and deeper, the developers stated that they were going to be making Clash changes consistently to keep everything levelheaded in the community feeling good heading into the final phase of season a discovery, which is Phase 4. Now, I don’t know about the consistent part, but we did see some changes.

Developer Insight

Now, I do think having class changes every single week and monitoring all of this every week could be exhausting as a developer, and in my opinion, I don’t really think it’s needed to that extent. I would rather them take their time on sort of lining up the shot and just generally fixing what needs to be fixed within classes over a nice big bulk because there are a lot of runes and spells out there that are broken or just simply not working as intended, which should really be addressed or fixed over time.

So hopefully, they take that time and invested on things like that rather than minor changes heading into the last phase. Either way, though, I think it’s impossible to meet the expectations of all Warcraft players out there because no matter what you do, they’re always going to be players who are just simply never pleased. Give someone a free car; they’re going to be mad about the color of that car.

Upcoming Class Tuning

Anyways, moving on, they did state that these class tuning is going to be coming on April 16th, which is in just a couple of days, and adjusting some of the room slots as well as class abilities, which is interesting.

Druid Adjustments

Moving on to Druid now, with balance getting some adjustments on their star surge interaction with clear casting, which is going to help them with a lot considering that it felt pretty bad spending your free spellcast on a very cheap star surge ability.

Significant Changes in Gameplay Mechanics

So, they cleaned that up and then they pretty much just went haywire on bear. They moved the skull bash Rune to the hand slot and swapped it over with the much-needed change that was the lacerate Rune, which is now finally moved to the leg slot, which was previously on the hands. This is a very big change. Bear tanks have been asking for this over three phases and they finally got it done. So, this is a major win not only that, it also saw some threat increases as well, which is always good. Big win for Bear tanks out there.

Adjustments to Rogue and Shaman Classes

Now, Rogues got some adjustments as well to their focus attack rune, buffing up the energy regeneration, which is cool, I guess. Shaman actually saw some nerfs to the internal cooldown for their very overpowered and popular overcharged Rune that would deal damage to all enemies around them, which was just absolutely broken, and it had to get adjusted.

So instead of it being on a 1-second internal cooldown, it has been increased to 3 seconds. Either way, it’s still a very strong Rune, no matter the way you look at it, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how this changes the Shaman tank and, you know, dungeons AOE farming stuff like that.

Enhancements for Warlocks and Warriors

Additionally, Warlocks saw a ton of love, which is really surprising, with Life Tap now granting mana to you and your pet as well, which is always a good thing. Your Unstable Afflictions damage has actually been increased by roughly 120%, which is a very big buff, and I’m hoping that we can start seeing some Affliction locks out there because they seem to be a little bit non-existent at this point. And now, the Master Demonologist Talent will also work on your Fel guard as well, which is a cool interaction also helping out Warriors for their solo gameplay.

Victory Rush actually saw some buffs as well, to where it now heals you for 30% of your total health, increasing from 10%, which is going to be phenomenal for leveling as well as just general solo gameplay, and should make their leveling process pretty much trivial at this point, considering how much damage they can deal once they get a decent weapon. So, 30% heal after every kill, you should be good to go.

Call for Adjustments to Restoration Shaman

Now personally, I would like to see some adjustments to Restoration Shaman though, as they are by far the worst spec in the entire game out of tank, healer, DPS. So hopefully, it gets some slight adjustments in the future, whether it comes to

Continued Focus on Class Adjustments

You know, rune placements or just some number tuning, that class is in desperate need of help. But yeah, those are the class changes. Remember, they did state they’re going to be more diligent with this and not making changes constantly throughout the phase, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just hope they take their time, look over some data for a while before making a nice chunk of class changes in just a few weeks’ time.

Enhancements in Professions

Some more stuff on professions though, we saw last episode that engineering got some additions to be able to use Goblin and Nish engineering at the same time, which is great. And now, it looks like we’re going to be seeing the same thing for alchemists out there because now alchemists can become both masters of transmutation as well as masters of mixology. There might be some of you out there being like, “What the hell does any of that even mean? Why would I care?” So, let me quickly explain. For Alchemy, transmuting something is changing one material into something else, for example, you transmute iron to gold, or you transmute undead to water.

Dual Mastery in Alchemy

And mixology is pretty much just giving you the extra chance to craft additional potions whenever you create one. But not only that, you can acquire both of these at the same time now in a brand new quest line in the Steamed Weedle port in Taris. It was actually shown on WAD that Master of Mixology grants about roughly 30-ish bonus yield for crafting potions and stuff, while master of transmutation, like always, is a big hit or miss.

You either get one, or sometimes you get up to a bonus of four times, which was recorded recently, which is insane. For example, you could transmute Arcane crystals into arcanite bars, which is going to be huge next phase for crafting your legendaries and stuff, and you can potentially get four times proc, generating anywhere between like 150-250 gold instantly if you’re lucky. So overall, alchemists are eating very well.

Impact of Herbalism and Recent Nerfs

Something that goes hand in hand with alchemy is actually herbalism, which you actually might not need if you need to acquire the exalted reputation reward from the Emerald Wardens called The Nightmare Resonance Crystal. Well, that was actually for about a day because, yes, for a while now, it seemed that acquiring this very difficult, hard, and rare trinket was super worth it, allowing you as a player to pick herbs inside of the incursion that would net you a ton of gold and benefit you greatly.

You’d be able to get Mountain Silver Sage, nightmare seeds, which is all very crucial for crafting materials for phase 3, and it’s worth a ton of gold. Not only that, you could have gotten rare items as well. The thing is, is that players are reporting that the exalted reward got heavily nerfed very quickly, and it’s now spawning these herbs at their selected locations pretty much like once every few hours, leaving players very upset and frustrated that they spent, you know, 75 tokens on this item now.

Significant Nerf to Reputation Item

I could see how something like this can get really out of hand quickly because these waypoints previously were on about a 5-minute cooldown, just generating a ton of gold. But what I mean is, I’ve seen hundreds of comments talking about how bad this item is now; it just seems like it’s way too much of a nerf, in my opinion.

Not only that, I was kind of hoping for some additional reputation rewards at the exalted rank, considering how much time it takes to get there. You know, like maybe a mount, a tabard, a pet, or potentially just some crafting recipes out there for each profession, some additional ways to enjoy World of Warcraft like professions, cosmetics, enhancements. So hopefully, they either add that this phase or take notes and learn from it heading into the final phase.

Detailed Response from Developers

So, Agrand actually gave a really detailed response stating that the goal for Season of Discovery is for semi-casual guilds to down the raids, especially these level-up raids. Season of Discovery isn’t a heroic level challenge, but that isn’t to say there won’t ever be anything inside that’s hard, but we just don’t believe that raiding should be hard in this version of classic WoW.

Notice how he didn’t say Classic Plus there, which was interesting. So, keep that down. He also went on to state that there are many different versions of World of Warcraft that have very difficult content, and Neron and Sunken Temple are vastly more challenging and require way more coordination than even original World of Warcraft. We don’t want to make raids a brick wall for the average Joe, and that isn’t the approach we’re likely going to take. After several years of watching data around classic player behavior, we don’t believe that difficult raid.

Player Preferences and Developer Intentions

Content is what players actually want, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, it’s very straightforward what’s happening here. You have to understand Season of Discovery in a straightforward way is a seasonal realm where phases are on a temporary timer, and they don’t want people to struggle with this content and miss lockouts.

The truth of the matter is, according to raw data, no one actually cares about struggling in a raiding environment when it comes to player retention. When things get too hard, people just simply don’t play; they quit and they get bored. At the end of the day, though, the developers want us to kill these bosses; they have the intention for us to down these raids.

The Role of Developers in MMO Design

I like to think of MMO developers in a way as like dungeon masters in Dungeons and Dragons. No matter what, as a DM, you know you have to have a scenario where a certain boss is defeated, just in case it actually happens. There are certain parts where your story can continue based on that happening. It’s the same thing with MMOs; they designed these creatures to be defeated, for you to get the loot and have fun. Of course, it’s always fun to have challenge and difficulty involved, but Season of Discovery is simply not going to be that. They made that very clear.

Personal Views on Raid Difficulty

If you’re asking me personally, I love challenge. I love difficulty in a raiding environment with all my friends and my guildies, and that’s why I really enjoy things like heroic or even Mythic plus raiding inside retail WoW. And that’s why optional raids like that, you know, even existed, to cater to the people who are that 1% and love to take it to the absolute extreme. Agrid was even asked about Ulduar, you know, like hard mode for extra loot coming to Season of Discovery to cater to that 1%, but because of the timeframe they’re just working with, they don’t have time. It’s not possible.

Anticipations for Upcoming Challenges

You know, that last 8 to 10 weeks, and by that metric, I do have to agree. You never know, though, when the level 60 phase comes out, and there might be some encounters that are a lot more difficult because we have, you know, an endless amount of time potentially in that phase unless they advance it or do something crazy. But it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the nearby future with challenge and difficulty in Season of Discovery.

New Lore Developments

Now, we also have some very interesting lore tidbits to go over in Season of Discovery, starting off with Zotth once again coming back in phase three, which is always very exciting news. On a broader news standpoint, though, what you’re seeing on screen now is actually a photo of Zotth being data-mined for the upcoming retail expansion, The War Within, and seeing her in this form honestly gave me chills because she looks badass, compared to what we’re used to seeing in Season of Discovery with her basic Shadow Void form. But yes, she is back in phase three, and it seems that she is cooking up even more big plans.

Quest Line Developments

So, of course, on our quest line to achieve our epic crafted gear, we are encountered with a problem that is pretty much impossible to deal with, and once again, she comes to save the day. At the end, she went to speak to us about Ziri Little Sprocket, which is one of the characters we spoke to about receiving our epic headpiece last phase, and then she spoke about those void-empowered bracers that someone found and repaired for her.

But if you remember previously from last phase, we spoke to Ziri, and she didn’t really have any remembrance of us even doing any of this with her, which definitely leads us to believe that there’s some sort of trickery going on here to make all this even happen.

Mysteries Unfold

Ziri has no memory of us bringing her this G7 core, which means that she was either mind-controlled, being influenced, had her memories wiped, or even maybe someone was impersonating and disguised as the gnome to trick us. I don’t know; that’s going to be interesting to talk about. Either way, those new set of void-powered bracers are also able to impart a portion of Zotth’s willpower onto the user, which seems like some bad juju if you ask me. It never seems like a good deal.

The kicker is that the last person that used these bracers has been lost by their previous owner, and the shadowy figure tells us that in order to help us, we need to go get the bracers, bring it back to her. So then when we finally do track down the adventurer, we talk to him, and he explains the situation pretty much that he was beaten by a tiny murloc, which seems a little bit hard to believe. Maybe he lost to this creature because he was influenced by the void, or something bigger was at play, controlling his mind here. And I’m not really too sure. So, we finally bring back the bracers to Zotth, she tells us that in order.

Complex Negotiations with Zotth

For her to help us, we need a small item that is of great interest to her on the creature’s corpse that we’re going to kill. Of course, there’s a price to pay with Zotth, and you know, getting all this power, and it seems that she wanted a fragment of a dream hiding within the mantle. Then, she gave us the shoulder mantle to keep for ourselves to increase our power, which then led us to craft our epic, you know, crafted shoulders. When we first met Zotth in phase one, she convinced us to accept some knowledge from her on how to use the Shard of the Void to craft our epic gear, and then she left a permanent mark on us inside of phase one.

Emerald Dream and Zotth’s Influence

Then, in phase two, the shadowy figure arrived just in time to help us and provide us with a mote of Darkness that we needed to charge up the void core for Ziri in Phase 2. And then she made it clear that we owe her a favor, which now, in phase three, I’m hoping this is us clearing our debt with her by bringing her that fragment of the dream hiding within the nightmare.

All this very interesting little tidbits, especially since in retail WoW for a while there, there was a whole Emerald Dream patch that went down, and Zotth has had major influence on everything going on there with the story heading into the future expansions about how she’s a major character with big roles to play, yada yada yada, in the brand new saga coming up.

Season of Discovery and Future Developments

All this is very cool stuff. I personally love the interaction between retail and Season of Discovery with this character, and I’m very excited to see how this finally concludes and reaches its sort of climax heading into level 60, as well as for the war within dropping later this year. Other than that, it really seems like World of Warcraft is just pumping lately, man. I mean, we’ve had Season of Discovery that’s doing well, Cataclysm coming out in a month, the World Soul Saga coming out for retail WoW which is set to be three expansions over the next few years.

New Game Modes and Expansions

Plunger Storm, which is a brand new mode that no one even saw coming, and then something very interesting on the horizon is actually the brand new announced World of Warcraft remix for Mists of Pandaria, which is just a brand new game mode that leaves me wondering what the hell is going on over there at Blizzard right now.

It’s actually going to be a version of World of Warcraft that’s game client is set within retail WoW where pretty much it’s Season of Discovery meets Mists of Pandaria, but the kicker is that your character can actually be carried over in progression to head toward the war within when it comes out, and you can be all caught up and stuff, pretty much being like a perfect segue for classic to Mists of Pandaria to retail WoW, bringing them all into one, which is freaking crazy. So you got this brand new character you’re leveling up from Level 10 to 70, and you’ll do raids just like Season of Discovery as you’re leveling up.

Challenging Content in Mists of Pandaria Remix

You’ll do dungeon content, and it’s also very difficult from the footage I’ve seen over this beta testing weekend. Nevertheless, it’s just really exciting to see Blizzard take some risks and do stuff that is brand new to try to bring players back into playing World of Warcraft again. And I’m just really curious: are any of you guys going to be trying out World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria remix? I mean, I think it’s pretty cool and I have to at least try it out because there are some exclusive cosmetics and stuff that you can earn for your World of Warcraft account that’s been gone from the game, you know, over the last 10 years at this point. All those challenge mode items and stuff, so it’s going to be really interesting to see, in my opinion.

Reflections on the Nature of Season of Discovery

It is super important to know and remember that Season of Discovery is its brand-new own thing inside World of Warcraft. This isn’t Classic Plus, this isn’t retail WoW, this isn’t classic; it’s Season of Discovery World of Warcraft. It’s kind of like WoW’s Greatest Hits and a way for these developers to just throw darts at a dartboard and see what sticks and see what people really enjoy when it comes to a content perspective. I truly believe in my heart of hearts that Classic Plus is going to be something that comes out on its own sometime, maybe next year after all this is said and done, and retail WoW is settled in and stuff like that.

Season of Discovery’s Unique Approach

And just like Blizzard always does, though, they’re going to amplify it times 10 and just knock it out of the park. You know, Season of Discovery is its own thing. I like to think of it almost like an arcade mode for World of Warcraft because it’s simply just jumping in, having a bunch of fun, and I’m.

Community Feedback and Expectations

I’m so happy with it, either way, no matter what happens. Moon’s tier brought up the idea of maybe new tabards coming in Season of Discovery for Emerald Wardens, and maybe they would supply reputation as well. I have to agree, I think the exalted reputation rewards are a little bit lacking, in my opinion.

Once again, I don’t think it’s always about character power and getting big and all that, and epic gear, even though that’s obviously one of the most impactful things on a person. But what about just basic things like crafting recipes, cosmetics, pets, tabards, mounts, things of that nature? I mean, if I was developing this seasonal realm that might not even be permanent, I would flood it with cosmetics like tabards, pets, and mounts. I wouldn’t do anything like transmog; I think that’s too much, but I would just flood it at that point. Why not?

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