Patch 12.1 Overview
Edit #1: Rogues have been added.
Rogue changes on the Curse of Ula’tek PTR this week:
CLASSES
ROGUE
Outlaw
Developers’ notes: Much of Killing Spree’s value is the combo points it generates, so when players can spend more combo points on Killing Spree than their maximum, such as through Supercharger, the value of those extra points is diminished. Killing Spree’s duration now maxes out at the time required to generate maximum combo points, and any extra combo points spent increase the damage of the ability by a proportional amount.
Killing Spree has been updated – Duration no longer increases from spending combo points beyond your maximum. Each combo point spent beyond your maximum increases damage by 15%.
Adrenaline Rush now speeds up the execution of Killing Spree by 20%, the same rate it increases the speed of your other attacks.
Killing Spree prefers targets that are not immune to damage or taking less than 5% physical damage.
Hello! Here are the list of changes to the Curse of Ula’tek PTR.
THE COILED ISLE
Corrosive Souls and Powers Updates
You will find Corrosive Souls in outdoor content which can be used to unlock powers at the Altar of Corrosion.
The Coiled Isle will be the primary source of souls.
Vaults of Atal’Utek
Curse Surges
Lair: Nymrissa
Prey: Ral’Kala
Also available via weekly Prey hunts and Bountiful Delves.
The souls will not be as prevalent as they were in the previous iteration on PTR.
Choose which powers to unlock in the order you desire via a new choice UI at the Altar of Corrosion. Unlocks are account wide.
Select which powers are active according to your preference and build. Choices are saved per character.
You can select 1 power to be active at first and then 2 after unlocking 8 powers.
The powers are only active in Midnight outdoor zones and delves.
To unlock this system you need to complete a short questline that starts from a mysterious item you may receive from outdoor activities that drop Corrosive Souls, or deterministically from Delve Journey Rank 2.
LAIRS
World difficulty is available for testing this week.
THE VENOMOUS ABYSS RAID
Mythic raid testing continues this week. Raid testing details can be found here: The Venomous Abyss Raid Testing Schedule
SEASON 2
All Season 2 dungeons are available on Mythic 0 and Mythic+ difficulty, and all difficulties for Altar of Fangs are available for testing this week.
CLASSES
DEMON HUNTER
Devourer
Hungering Slash now properly gives a temporary charge of Vengeful Retreat rather than giving a free cast and also resetting its cooldown.
Havoc
Inertia effect now increases damage by 12% for 6 seconds (was 18% for 5 seconds).
DRUID
Restoration
The Venomous Abyss 4-set bonus has been redesigned – Nature’s Swiftness, Tranquility, and Incarnation: Tree of Life or Convoke the Spirits have a 100% chance to grant Genesis, and its duration is increased by 4 seconds.
Guardian
Fixed an issue where Mangle was consuming Ravage procs.
Fixed an issue where Dream Guide was incorrectly being consumed by Regrowths cast via Reinvigoration.
EVOKER
Preservation
Fixed an issue that could cause Time Dilation to not clear its stored damage on death.
HUNTER
Beast Mastery
Beast Cleave can no longer be cancelled.
Marksmanship
Explosive Shot damage increased by 100%, but now only explodes for 50% of the damage done to other nearby enemies.
Survival
Developers’ notes: We’re removing Flamefang Pitch in this week’s PTR as it has not been a popular choice and doesn’t interact with several of the mechanics of the Survival Hunter spec. We had to adjust a few talents with the removal of Flamefang Pitch, but kept them focused on Wildfire Bombs and fiery themes. There has been some feedback about usability problems with the Pack Leader Hero Talents, specifically Hogstrider, with the timing of Boomstick so we’re making the Hogstrider Buff last significantly longer. We’re also adjusting your tier set bonus to introduce more gameplay with Boomstick and Mongoose Fury.
New Talent: Bombardier – Wildfire Bomb damage, critical strike chance, and critical damage dealt increased by 15%.
Wildfire Imbuement has been redesigned – Throwing a Wildfire Bomb has a chance to imbue your weapon with flames, causing you and your pet’s auto-attacks to deal additional Fire damage for 10 seconds.
Grenade Juggler has been redesigned – Throwing a Wildfire Bomb has a chance to increase the recharge rate of Wildfire Bomb by 75% for 8 seconds.
Grenade Juggler is now tracked in the Cooldown Manager.
Lunge now increases your Agility by 3% (was 2%), plus an additional 1% (was 2%) while dual-wielding.
Wildfire Shells now grants 5 seconds of cooldown reduction to Wildfire Bombs (was 2 seconds).
The Venomous Abyss 2-set bonus has been updated – Mongoose Fury increases the damage of Wildfire Bomb by 10%.
The Venomous Abyss 4-set bonus has been updated – Each blast of Boomstick increases the duration of Mongoose Fury by 1 second. Mongoose Fury effects are increased by 10%.
Flamefang Pitch has been removed.
References to Flamefang Pitch have been removed from several talents.
Hero Talents
Pack Leader
Hogstrider now lasts for 1 minute (was 20 seconds).
Hogstrider is now cancelled when starting a Raid encounter or Mythic+ dungeon.
Sentinel
Moon’s Blessing now grants 6 seconds of Wildfire Bomb cooldown reduction when applying Sentinel’s Mark (was 4 seconds).
Sentinel’s Mark duration increased to 16 seconds (was 12 seconds).
MAGE
Arcane
Fixed an issue that could cause Refractive Images to not clear its stored damage on death.
Fixed an issue with how the tooltip calculated Clearcasting’s chance to occur with different talent selections. Clearcasting’s functionality is unchanged.
Fire
The Venomous Abyss 2-set bonus – Fixed an issue that caused a Pyroblast affected by Hot Streak! to gain a bonus to their critical strike chance while Pyroclasm was active.
PALADIN
Protection
Hammer and Anvil damage reduced by 20%.
Instrument of the Divine now shares a choice node with Solace (was Sanctuary).
Bulwark of Righteous Fury increases the damage of your next Shield of the Righteous by 10% per stack, was 20%.
The Venomous Abyss 4-set bonus – Now deals 100% additional damage on a critical strike (was 200%).
PRIEST
Holy
Flash Heal mana cost reduced by 10%.
Prayer of Healing mana cost reduced by 10%.
Apex Talent: Benediction healing increased by 15%.
Apex Talent: Benediction (Rank 3) has been updated – Apotheosis no longer upgrades Flash Heal to Benediction. Holy Word: Serenity now has a 100% chance to upgrade your next Flash Heal to Benediction.
Developers’ notes: We want to address Benediction’s performance by spreading its availability beyond Apotheosis and Prayer of Mending. Additionally, we are increasing the throughput of Benediction, so its impact is felt and contributes more to Holy’s overall throughput. Lastly, we want to further lessen how expensive the rotation of Holy is by specifically targeting Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing.
Shadow
Idol of N’Zoth now generates 2 Insanity (was 4) at 50 stacks and 6 Insanity (was 12) at 100 stacks.
Developers’ notes: Insanity generation from this talent has been high relative to other passive sources, and we’ve been feeling there’s too much Insanity being generated overall to where it can become difficult to spend Insanity and keep up with rotational procs. We’re bringing the Insanity generation of this talent down to help balance the Insanity economy.
Fixed an issue causing Tentacle Slam to apply extra stacks of Horrific Visions when talented for Maddening Tentacles and Idol of N’Zoth.
Fixed an issue causing Improved Voidform to generate Insanity when casting Voidform.
The Venomous Abyss 4-set bonus has been redesigned – Tentacle Slam has a 100% chance to grant a free use of Void Volley at 125% effectiveness.
Developers’ notes: Based on feedback, we’ve updated Shadow’s 4-piece bonus to align better with gameplay changes in Curses of Ula’tek. Instead of granting a free use of Vampiric Touch with added bonuses, it now has a chance to grant a use of Void Volley. Our goal is for this to be a fun occasional gameplay twist by granting a cast of a normally exclusive spell.
Hero Talents
Archon
Focused Outburst now causes Shadow Word: Madness casts during Voidform to unleash a Void Volley at your target at 25% effectiveness (was 100%).
Developers’ notes: At full value, this was too much of an upswing in both burst and Insanity generation. Our goal is to keep the visual impact of this talent but make adjustments to its damage and insanity contribution.
SHAMAN
Restoration
Developers’ notes: We’re lowering some of the larger bonuses that Healing Rain receives from the Totemic Hero Talents and increasing Healing Rain’s baseline healing amount.
Healing Rain healing increased by 20%.
Healing Wave healing increased by 10%.
Hero Talents
Totemic
Pulse Capacitor now increases the healing done by Surging Totem by 10% (was 25%).
Surging Totem now increases the effectiveness of Healing Rain by 10% (was 20%).
WARLOCK
Fixed an issue where several abilities would not grant Soul Leech:
Wither
Blackened Soul
Infernal Bolt
Soul Anathema
Wicked Reaping
Avatar of Destruction’s Chaos Bolt
Unstable Affliction
Malefic Grasp
Vilefiend’s Headbutt and Bile Spit
Gloomhound’s Gloom Slash
Wild Imp and Imp Gang Boss’s Fel Firebolt
Imp Lord’s Greater Felbolt
Demonic Tyrant’s Demonfire
Fixed an issue where several abilities erroneously granted Soul Leech:
Legion Strike
Cunning Cruelty
Channel Demonfire
Affliction
Developers’ notes: Patient Zero warps the damage profile of Seed of Corruption heavily. The specific use-case for Seed of Corruption as a tool is to supply damage in multi-target situations and having the ability to increase priority damage dilutes its identity. Hedonic Gorging is a new talent that hooks into the common throughline of health leech between Drain Life, Siphon Life, and Dark Harvest. The intention for this talent is for most of the throughput to reside in Siphon Life and Dark Harvest while the increase to Drain Life is meant to be smaller and a bit of flavor.
New Talent: Hedonic Gorging – Increases Drain Life damage by 10% and Siphon Life now increases the damage of Corruption by an additional 10%. Dark Harvest channels 10% faster and deals 15% increased damage.
Patient Zero has been removed.
Destruction
All damage reduced by 5%.
Shadowburn added as a tracked buff in the Cooldown Manager.
Developers’ notes: Our intention is to allow players to track the lingering effect of Shadowburn if desired while freeing up the ability to track the availability of Shadowburn itself. Prior to this, tracking Shadowburn also tracked its debuff which made it confusing when trying to discern if Shadowburn was available or not to cast.
The Venomous Abyss 4-set bonus has been updated – Targets damaged by Echo of Sargeras now take 6% increased damage from your spells and abilities for 6 seconds.
Developers’ notes: Due to an oversight, the original bonus functioned incorrectly. The intention behind this set bonus was to increase all damage dealt to the target, not just Echo of Sargeras.
ITEMS
Substantially reduced the Anguish costs for housing items purchased from Prey vendors for Season 1 and Season 2.
There is a known issue with the Transmog UI on the PTR. This will be fixed in the next build.
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
Players that are under the effects of Fear and Disorient crowd control will no longer be affected by knockback effects.
HUNTER
Scatter Shot has returned as a PvP talent – A short-range shot that deals damage, removes all harmful damage over time effects, and incapacitates the target for 3 seconds. Any damage caused will remove the effect. Turns off your attack when used.
MAGE
Overpowered Barrier no longer grants Invisibility and immunity for Arcane. Instead, it grants Time Warp for 6 seconds if the barrier is fully consumed.
WARLOCK
Bonds of Fel damage increased by 100%, and radius increased to 12 yards (was 8 yards). Visual has been updated to better identify the boundaries for enemies.
USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Added a Back button to the Achievements pane.
