- Author: Passion
- Date: May 12, 2023
- Updated: May 28, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
The Call of the Crusade PTR has received a stack of noteworthy changes. These changes include some class balancing, some bug fixes, a lot of Titan Rune changes, and even some quality of life enhancements!
Titan Rune Dungeons will receive a new difficulty, “Defense Protocol Beta”, effectively Heroic++. This will further increase the health, damage, and add additional affixes to each dungeon. This difficulty will drop Ulduar 10 gear, instead of alongside Naxxramas 10 gear, but will not drop regular Heroic gear. Defense Protocol Beta bosses will also award the currency “Sidereal Essence”. This currency can be exchanged in Dalaran for Ulduar 10 Hard Mode items, which do not drop in the dungeons.
Warriors will be receiving a new minor glyph, Glyph of Shattering Throw. This causes Shattering Throw to be instant cast and usable in any stance. Shattering Throw is an important raid cooldown for Warrior DPS, but requires you to hard cast and be in Battle Stance, making it a DPS loss for the Warrior. As a downside, Glyph of Shattering Throw will also remove the invulnerability breaking component of Shattering Throw. This should ideally mean the glyph is exclusively used in PvE, leaving arena balance unchanged.
A few Class specific bugs have also been corrected. Mana Burn effects will now be properly mitigated by resilience. Blink will no longer disconnect you if used while water walking. Shadowfiend will no longer break Crowd Control effects on summon. Dancing Rune Weapon now correctly inherits weapon damage, is correctly effected by Glyph of Death Strike, and will now gain the benefits of Improved Icy Touch. Additionally, On Next Hit melee attacks such as Heroic Strike and Rune Strike should no longer disable the spell queue window.
Something I’m sure a lot of players will be glad to hear, Usuri Brightcoin, the Emblem exchange vendor in Dalaran Sewers, is now able to exchange multiple emblems at once, instead of requiring players to exchange one-by-one.
The full patch notes can be found below.
Greetings!
The Wrath of the Lich King Public Test Realm has been updated with a new build. Below you’ll find this week’s testing focus and information on additional bug fixes and adjustments.
Build: 49563
May 11th 2023
Testing Focus
Titan Rune Dungeons – Defense Protocol Beta
- The new difficulty of Titan Rune Dungeons, “Defense Protocol Beta” will be available for testing on Friday May 12th at 11:00AM PDT.
- Please note that the Nerubian family of dungeons which includes Azjol-Nerb and Ahn’kahet, the Old Kingdom are not available for testing at this time. We hope to be able to make these dungeons available for testing early next week.
- To initiate Defense Protocol Beta, your group will need to interact with the Mysterious Device at the entrance of a heroic dungeon, select the Defense Protocol Beta option from the gossip text. All five members of the party will need to channel on the object until the cast bar completes, and then Defense Protocol Beta will be active.
- With Defense Protocol Beta active, the creatures and bosses within the dungeon will have a variety of dangerous new effects, as well as additional health and damage.
- Bosses killed with Defense Protocol Beta active will award loot from the 10-player version of Ulduar.
- The final boss of every Defense Protocol Beta dungeon will also award a new currency: Sidereal Essence.
- Each final boss will award a single Sidereal Essence to each group member.
- Sidereal Essences may be exchanged for rewards from 10-player Hard mode Ulduar gear at the Animated Constellation vendor in Dalaran.
- The Animated Constellation can be found with the other emblem vendors in the Silver Enclave and Sunreaver’s Sanctuary.
- Please note that the Sidereal Essence prices for each item listed in the previous PTR build were placeholder, and the prices have been adjusted in this week’s build.
- The satchel awarded from the final boss of the daily heroic will now drop additional Emblems of Triumph when Defense Protocol Beta is active.
Additional Bug Fixes and Gameplay Adjustments
Spells and Abilities
- A new minor glyph has been added to the game: Glyph of Shattering throw.
- Your shattering throw is now instant and may be used in any stance, but no longer removes invulnerabilities and cannot be used on players or player-controlled targets.
- Developer’s Note: This glyph is being added to smooth out the usage of one of the clunkier raid utility cooldowns in Wrath Classic. The usage of Shattering Throw was often a strict DPS loss for Warriors as you would need to change stances and lose your pooled rage, and using it had a cast time which left the warrior immobile and vulnerable. The usage of this raid cooldown should now feel significantly more natural without most of the drawbacks and should not impact the usage of Shattering Throw in PvP at all.
- Death Knight – Fixed several additional issues with Dancing Rune Weapon:
- Glyph of Death Strike now properly increases the damage of Dancing Rune Weapon’s Death Strike.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now correctly inherits the weapon damage of the wielder for special attacks.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now gains a benefit from the Improved Icy Touch talent.
- Fixed an issue that caused On Next Hit melee attacks to disable the spell queue window.
- Mana burns are now properly mitigated by resilience.
- Mage – Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause the mage to disconnect from the game when using Blink while moving on the surface of water with a water-walking ability.
- Priest – Fixed an issue that caused the Shadowfiend to occasionally break Crowd Control when summoned and to incorrectly place nearby players that are not the Shadowfiend’s active target into combat.
User Interface
- Usuri Brightcoin in the Dalaran sewers has gotten significantly better at multitasking and can now exchange multiple emblems in one transaction.
- Fixed a game crash that occurred when viewing the tooltip for Meeting Stones on German Language clients.
- Fixed an issue where some settings in the Options menu would not take effect immediately upon being adjusted.
- The raid difficulty banner icon above the minimap will now properly display raid size and difficulty information when you are in a Wrath of the Lich King Raid.
Art and Environment
- Heroic Raid portals are now correctly displaying the very awesome and heavy metal 3d Skull asset. Brutal.
- Fixed an issue that occasionally caused pets to become stuck in the entrance tube in the Dalaran Arena.
Thank you!
About the Author
They’re also going to add separate group finder tabs for heroic+ and heroic++. Why heroic+ couldn’t have one in the first place is beyond me. It won’t have gotten its own tab until an entire phase after it was introduced. It’s hard to give credit for another “too little too late” change, as everyone will be moving over to heroic++ now anyway.
It will be noted down and shared when all changes become public thanks for your comment! 🙂