June 24 Development Notes for Patch 11.2.0 Ghosts of K’aresh in The War Within

Hello! The Ghosts of K’aresh PTR has been updated with the following:

MANAFORGE OMEGA RAID

Normal and Heroic raid testing begins this week. See the raid testing schedule for dates and times: Manaforge Omega: Raid Testing Schedule

THE WAR WITHIN SEASON 3

Eco-Dome Al’dani testing for all difficulties begins this week. See the dungeon testing schedule for more information: The War Within Season 3 Dungeon Testing Schedule

CLASSES

• DEATH KNIGHT
  • Hero Talents
    • Deathbringer
      • Frost
        • Exterminate second scythe damage has been increased by 20%.
    • Rider of the Apocalypse
      • Frost
        • Mawsworn Menace has been updated – Increases the damage of Obliterate by 10% and Remorseless Winter lasts 2 seconds longer.
        • Frostscythe now shatters Trollbane’s Chains of Ice.
        • Whitemane’s Famine – Frostscythe now adds a stack to Undeath and spreads it to a nearby enemy.
    • San’layn
      • Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus: An issue causing the set bonus to grant more Mastery than intended has been resolved.
      • Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus: An issue causing the set bonus to not benefit from Gift of the San’layn has been resolved.
  • Frost
    • Developer’s notes: We appreciate the continued engagement and feedback on the Frost Death Knight updates. This week, we’ve focused on refining Frostscythe interactions within the Hero Talent trees, improving resource economy, and tuning damage output. We’ve also made several gameplay adjustments based on community feedback.
    • Some talents have shifted positions.
    • Cryogenic Chamber has been updated – When Howling Blast consumes Rime, 15% of the damage it deals is stored in the next cast of Remorseless Winter. No longer replaces Remorseless Winter.
    • Frozen Dominion has been updated – Pillar of Frost casts a Remorseless Winter that lasts 4 seconds longer, each enemy hit with Remorseless Winter increases your Mastery by 8%, up to 40% for 15 seconds. Now replaces Remorseless Winter.
    • Frostreaper has been updated – Obliterate deals 10% increased damage and has a chance to tether the souls of its target and a nearby enemy to yours. Frost Strike severs the tethers, dealing Shadowfrost damage to both foes.
    • All damage increased by 10%.
    • Glacial Advance applies Razorice baseline.
    • Glacial Advance damage has been increased by 25%.
    • All Runic Power spenders now cost 35 Runic Power (was 40).
    • Frostbane now triggers from Arctic Assault. Tooltip has been updated.
    • Arctic Assault now triggers a Glacial Advance at 60% effectiveness.
    • Frigid Executioner – Runic Empowerment now has a 25% chance to refund an additional Rune (was 20%).
    • Runic Empowerment – Each Runic Power spent has a 1.8% chance to generate a Rune (was 1.6%).
    • Frostbound Will now reduces the cooldown of Empower Rune Weapon by 6 seconds.
    • Empower Rune Weapon no longer incurs the global cooldown but has its own 0.75 second cooldown on cast.
    • Fixed an issue that caused Rage of the Frozen Champion to grant 10% increased chances instead of 15% to activate Rime.
    • Frozen Dominion duration will no longer refresh when it gains a stack.
    • Runic Strikes has been removed.
  • Unholy
    • Fixed an issue that caused Eternal Agony to not extend the duration of Dark Transformation.
• EVOKER
  • Hero Talents
    • Chronowarden
      • Manaforge Omega set bonuses have been updated:
        • 2-set Bonus – Tip the Scales’ cooldown is reduced by 60 seconds.
        • 4-set Bonus – Temporal Burst causes Chrono Flames to strike 1 additional target and repeat 10% additional damage or healing, up to a maximum of 400% spell power.
        • Developers’ notes: These were in for PTR week 1, but we’re noting here for posterity.
• HUNTER
  • Hero Talents
    • Dark Ranger
      • Bleak Powder now deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
      • Umbral Reach has been updated – Now also causes Bleak Powder to apply Black Arrow’s periodic effect to each enemy it damages.
        • Developers’ notes: Making Black Arrow’s periodic damage effect easier to apply should make Phantom Pain substantially easier to use.
      • Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been updated – Now reduces the cooldown of Trueshot/Call of the Wild by 30/60 seconds. No longer causes Black Arrow to reduce the cooldown of Trueshot or Call of the Wild.
      • Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been updated – Now increases Withering Fire Black Arrow damage by 50% (was 25%).
    • Sentinel
      • Marksmanship: Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been updated – Now additionally increases Rapid Fire damage by 25%.
      • Survival: Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been updated – Now additionally increases Wildfire Bomb damage by 10%. Boon of Elune Wildfire Bomb initial damage bonus increased to 150% (was 60%).
      • Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been updated – No longer causes the Boon of Elune to apply additional Sentinel stacks. Now causes the Boon of Elune to be active for the duration of Lunar Storm at 100% effectiveness.
  • Beast Mastery
    • Wildspeaker has been updated – Dire Beasts summoned while Bestial Wrath is active will gain Wildspeaker’s damage bonus at a reduced duration.
• MAGE
  • Hero Talents
    • Frostfire
      • Fire: Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been updated – Now affects Frostfire Bolt (was Ice Nova).
      • Frost: Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been updated – Pyroblast damage increased by 200% and Pyroblast proc now benefits from Splitting Ice.
      • Manaforge Omega 4-set tooltips updated to now show damage values instead of % effectiveness.
    • Spellslinger
      • Arcane: Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus – Chance to trigger increased to 100% (was 50%).
      • Arcane: Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus – Now also increases Splinter damage by 8%. Now hits up to 8 targets (was 5).
    • Sunfury
      • Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus has been updated – Now increases Spellfire Sphere spell damage by 2% (was 1%). Now also increases Mana Cascade’s Haste bonus by 0.5% per stack. No longer has a chance to make the Phoenix not consume Spheres.
      • Manaforge Omega 4-set bonus has been updated – Now additionally causes exceptional spells cast by your Phoenix to increase the duration of your next Arcane Soul/Hyperthermia by an additional 1 second per cast. Flame Quills and Lesser Time Warp duration increased to 13 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• MONK
  • Brewmaster
    • Walk with the Ox has been updated – Stomp damage has been doubled and its chance to trigger has been halved. Additionally, it now also reduces the cooldown of Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox by 30 seconds per point allocated.
    • Adjusted many talent locations.
• PALADIN
  • Retribution
    • Fixed an issue that caused Highlord’s Judgment to play an improper animation for some races.
• PRIEST
  • Shadow
    • Idol of N’Zoth now triggers at 50/100 stacks of Horrific Visions instead of 25/50/75/100.
    • Insanity generation from 100 stacks of Horrific Visions is now 12 (was 20).
    • All damage reduced by 4%.
    • Updated the visuals for Idol of N’zoth.
    • Subservient Shadows now increases the duration of summoned minions by 20% instead of 3 seconds.
    • Voidweaver
      • Shadow Word: Deaths from Death’s Torment now have a reduced chance to trigger Depth of Shadows.
      • Deathspeaker now increases the health threshold for Depth of Shadows.
      • Subservient Shadows now increases the duration of minions from Depth of Shadows.
• ROGUE
  • Hero Talents
    • Fatebound
      • Fixed an issue that caused the damage bonus from Fatebound Coin Heads flips to be lower than intended.
      • Fixed an issue where talents that modified your chance for a flip to match the previous flip weren’t always working as intended. This fix should be an overall damage increase.
      • Mean Streak tooltip has been updated – No longer includes “multiple times in a row.” This clarifies the behavior that any coin flipped by Dispatch or Envenom is more likely to match the same face as the last flip.
  • Outlaw
    • Killing Spree now only strikes enemies in front of you and its cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes (was 1.5 minutes).
    • Killing Spree’s icon has been updated.
• SHAMAN
  • Hero Talents
    • Stormbringer
      • Enhancement: Manaforge Omega 2-set bonus – Now activates Ascendance for 5 seconds every 6 Awakening Storms (was 6 seconds every 3 Awakening Storms).
  • Elemental
    • The following spells no longer display their projectile spell effects for allies in dungeons and raids:
      • Lava Burst Overload
      • Lightning Bolt Overload
      • Icefury Overload
      • Elemental Blast Overload
    • The visual effect for Earth Shock Overload no longer displays for allies in dungeons and raids.
    • The visual effect for Earth Shock now has a smaller impact visual for allies in dungeons and raids.
  • Enhancement
    • Thorim’s Invocation now consumes up to 10 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon to cast Tempest (was consuming only at 10 stacks).

USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY

• The Spell Density feature has been revamped in Ghosts of K’aresh to increase visual clarity of combat and encounters by reducing spell visual effects that do not communicate important combat information to the player in addition to reducing visuals based on framerate to improve performance. The Reduced setting should meet most players’ needs for improving visibility of encounter mechanics and performance, and Essential will provide the strongest performance-based reduction for players who need it.
  • This feature is under active development and we expect to update it continually going forward. For more information, please see this forum post: FEEDBACK: Spell Visual Density Updates

Hello!

This week’s Ghosts of K’aresh PTR includes changes and improvements to the Spell Density graphics setting. Previously, this option would dynamically reduce the amount of spell visuals being displayed, based on your current framerate. This has been helpful to players with lower-performance systems, but we want to improve it, with the goal of giving players more control over how spell visuals in combat look, regardless of performance.

The Spell Density system is first designed with a focus on improving players’ visibility of important information in combat, so that players can better see and respond to combat mechanics. The new system provides game designers and artists with improved controls over which spell visuals get displayed and how, so that there can be a reduction of visuals that do not convey useful information to the player about the state of combat.

How It Works

The Spell Density system can only alter spell visuals initiated by other players in your party or raid, and can either skip a visual entirely or cause it to be rendered in a less-visible way (e.g. more transparent, smaller, or an entirely different visual).

There are situations in which the Spell Density system will never alter visuals.

• Your (and your pet’s) spell and ability visuals will always be displayed at full intensity, regardless of Spell Density settings.
• NPC spells and abilities will always be displayed at full intensity.
• Enemy player spells and abilities will always be displayed at full intensity.
  • This is subject to change in future iterations of the Spell Density system. We recognize that PvP combat has different criteria for which visuals are important for combat decision-making.

In this week’s new PTR build, there are now three Spell Density options:

• Everything
• Reduced
• Essential

Everything, as the name suggests, causes all visuals to be rendered at full intensity. This is how visuals were rendered before this update.

Reduced and Essential activate different levels of the Spell Density system. Reduced is tuned for what we consider to be ideal for dungeon and raid content. Essential is for players who need the most reduction possible while still retaining WoW’s iconic combat look and feel.

We plan to continually update and iterate on this system throughout the Ghosts of K’aresh PTR and for the foreseeable future, and your feedback is highly valuable. Please test this new system in your content of choice and when you leave feedback, please note the type of content you were in, which setting you had the Spell Density option set to, and any specific spell or ability visuals that are relevant.

Thank you very much!