Usually, I wait until the weekend to do the big roundup of news for you, but honestly, this time, I couldn't wait because there's quite a lot going on. Some exciting early PTR updates and Blizzard's reaction times to things are getting mighty fast. They've already responded to even more class chain stuff, tier set stuff, and Mythic plus affects feedback with some PTR changes and promise future ones. It's actually pretty big stuff, so let's jump in.
Okay, data mining has found out that patch 10.1 is going to feature a pretty special event - a Diablo 4 launch celebration. It's called "Welcome to Sanctuary." Now, the description reads "Strange winds blow in from another world. Sightings of odd bag-holding creatures spot the land, and heroes are filled with renewed vigor. Treasure goblins can be spotted from to be decided to be decided - who knows where that's going to be? The winds of San country blow in from..." and then two dates. We don't know what dates those are going to be, but with Diablo 4 launching for deluxe and ultimate edition pre-orders on the 2nd of June and the full launch on the 6th of June, I would imagine in and around that time, maybe for a few weeks so that people don't feel torn about which game to play.
Now, the best part here is that "winds of sanctuary," like with "winds of wisdom" that they've run before, is a 50% XP buff. It's a bit of a shame it won't run alongside any timewalking because that would have been absolutely insane for level gains. But if you maybe want alts to play in 10.1, that's going to be your time. It also adds an 8% buff to reputations except for the new Nathan in turn one. So, again, it'll be a pretty great opportunity to go to the Forbidden Reach, pick up the envoy, and then finish any old renown that you're missing with an 18% boost on top of whatever catch-up you may have on your characters. Then, of course, we've got the treasure goblins too. They actually drop bags of stuff. We don't know much more than that. There's a 16-slot bag, which is odd, a new Belial pet, and an enmity hood and cloak, but no model has been found for those.
All in all, then, it's a nice little event to celebrate Blizzard finally releasing a big new game. And for the longest time, I mean, doing crossovers and stuff like that, it feels like Blizzard really missed a beat not doing that. It's actually something FF14 has done to a lot of success, so I suppose it's nice to see them do it.
Next, we have some amazing Heritage armor stuff. Sadly, it does appear that this is going to be a patch 10.1 thing, so it won't be a fix for you right now. But basically, obviously, the Orcs and Humans make a lot of sense. And the nice thing is that Heritage quests for non-allied race characters will no longer require exalted with their home faction. That basically means that if you're leveling a new character right just for those quests or perhaps you have an untouched alt, that means that you can skip the tedious sort of two-hour or so grind in Magister's Terrace or Machinar to get rep, and you can go straight into the Heritage questlines, which are great. I would assume Blizzard has maybe seen that even though these are fantastic quests, a lot of people haven't experienced them. The original reward instead, while that is definitely a theory, it can't prove it. Obviously, if it is true, that's unfortunate. That doesn't really feel good. Um, I don't know. I mean, we'll have to see for the next Activision earnings call if they actually mention anything about WoW's revenue. I have to imagine it's that situation of like they're doing all they can to deliver content, but it's just going to take time to win people back because they were rightly put off the game for quite a long time. Anyway, from the unfortunate onto the expansion teasing.
Okay, there are a lot of sets we can speculate on, but one theme that 10.07 sold us on was pirates, right? We saw those pirates. You like, you know, you pick up that pirate book, and you learn about the Night Squall, this legendary pirate captain who's going to get together while who has returned from the other side of Azeroth is going to get like a massive, you know, pirate fleet going all that crazy stuff. Now, what's also in the water and in patch 10.07? Obviously, it's the Naga who leads the Naga. Well, that would be Queen Ashara.
She is coming back from the void. We've got a video on that on Saturday, by the way, so stay tuned for that. But of course, what else is related to the void? Well, the Dark Moon Fair. Yeah, you might not get that immediately, but just look around the Darkmoon fair. Look at all the spooky stuff that there is. There's long been a conspiracy theory that we've not really talked about much in the channel, um, about like Silas Dark Moon, Dark Moon, and a bunch of old God related stuff. And now, of course, the Dark Moon Fair, uh, like Harlequin set that was last month's Trading Post set.
Now, what else is related to Ashara? Obviously, the night elves are related to Ashara. Any big story with Queen Ashara, it does make sense to bring night elves into it. Of course, Night Squall, that pirate captain, uh, that was a real Nintendo 7. Well, the Night Squall is a night elf. Of course, the night elves worship Elune, and the very first monthly reward from The Trading Post was Ashudar, which was a night elf mount with a sun and moon theme. And then, of course, there's the data mining that has a matching armor set for Ashudar.
Then, of course, we have the Fire Plume Regalia, yes, regalia, which is the last in-game store set. It is themed like the sun, and funny enough, the one before that was all starry and cosmic.
So, I mean, our next expansion, if we think about everything they've been talking about, even the old God hints that are in and around dragonflight that are certainly going to be involved in 10.1 when we see Deathwing's big laboratory, well, we got pirates, we've got Naga, we've got night elves, we've got the moon, we've got a loon, therefore we have the sun, we have the stars, we have the void. So, there you go Blizzard, you've been Columboed, we have you sussed. Now, as if there wasn't enough void in today's news, we do have a new set of data mined titles. Most of these are the usual affair, but there's one that I almost certainly will not get. They have certainly been quick to address some of our issues with the new method plus affixes that they announced, and they've explained a bit of what they're going for. So Afflicted, they say, is meant to incentivize a greater focus on dispel utility while offering healers and off-healers alternatives.
Through healing the thing up, they say that they're going to have a lot less health since they made them way too hard to heal. Then there's Corporeal, the spawning ad that you need to interrupt or crowd control. It will be updated to be immune to damage, spawn less, and if they can get it to work, it will despawn once combat with other mobs is over, which is certainly good.
They explained that it is supposed to be the same as Afflicted, but instead of focusing on dispel utility, it's CC utility, basically a consistent pack-by-pack need to maximize your gameplay outside of just hitting your core rotation buttons. Harder than Entangling, they only say that they are keeping an eye on the potency of the snare and the required response, so they may reduce the slow. They're open to changing it.
They're also going to improve the visuals and the audio for it because it basically ends up being kind of hard to notice without a weak aura when you're in the already chaotic environment of having nameplates and mobs everywhere. As for Explosive, it has actually been toned down a bit to have less health and to spawn more consistently, with Blizzard saying that it was still a healer problem because people just started healing through the blast instead.
The designed shift away from being a healer problem is being discussed, which basically includes the possibility of Explosives applying a shield based on its remaining health to each mob when it goes off, which would basically mean that damage-wise it's more efficient to swap single target and nuke it, which I think is a better design. Lastly, and this is kind of big, they're moving affixes. Affixes used to appear on level 4 and level 7, right, the ones we're talking about now, but with the changes to scaling and dragonflight, they now say it makes more sense for affixes to appear first on Keystone level 7 and then on Keystone level 14.
They basically say this gives people more time to actually get used to the dungeons without the affixes ramping up and up and up, and that it better fits the rewards that are being given by the game now.
This bit is great news for players who are struggling to get into Mythic plus and may stick to those lower keys because they just don't want to have to deal with, as an example, whatever the two affixes are plus a seasonal. So, I suppose they're happy enough. Of course, there's not going to be a seasonal in our next patch, so who knows. I mean, this won't be hugely impactful for the people who will be just going right into very high keys, but I don't think they're the target audience for a lot of the problem fixing of Mythic plus. I think a lot of that comes down to people being a bit overwhelmed, a little bit scared, they feel that they'll be socially punished for not knowing things, you know, that sort of thing. So, I'd say this is better.
I think this focus on having affixes require extra utility solves is kind of interesting because even if it does give you more gameplay, it does reduce how many mechanics designers can actually put into a dungeon baseline because they'll always have to account for extra utility pressure being put on top of whatever they do.
Right direction, next then drama. Okay, so there's always a little bit of drama regarding high-end content, and this time it's WeakAuras being very strong. This week, there's a bit of drama over a WeakAura that Echo used in the MDI. So, when you're doing Court of Stars and trying to find out who the informant is before the final boss, you're supposed to pay attention to what the various characters are wearing. Well, it turns out that a simple macro or WeakAura can be used to find the spy immediately. The way it works is that the dialogue option you select for the spy looks the same as for the non-spies, but they have a different ID under the hood. The WeakAura or macro just checks for the right ID, and if it's the right one, you know immediately.
I think it's pretty clear that this is making use of an oversight by Blizzard, and it is absolutely cheating in the spirit of the game. It's using a macro or add-on to bypass the intended solution to a dungeon. It also doesn't speed things up too much because Paladins can spot the group with the spy immediately with the Legion artifact appearance, and Echo still lost the Court of Stars despite this. The lack of a statement or any punishment from Blizzard does imply that they were perhaps made aware of this at the time and let it through, maybe because they thought, "Ah, it's Echo, they're going to do what they can to get the advantage. That's competition."
Of course, now that it's out in the wild, Blizzard has hotfixed it. Though, it only took a few minutes for somebody to find the new ID and update the WeakAura anyway, meaning that the WeakAura arms race has begun. I bring this up because, like with the Mists of Tirna Scythe maze, there is a question here: Do these non-combat mechanics really belong in Mythic Plus? While they're a cool and flavorful touch for a dungeon and a role-playing game, when you have to do them over and over again in Mythic Plus, it can become tedious for some players.
It's a hard call for Blizzard, but I think cool non-combat stuff still needs to be fun for everybody to solve and it needs to be immune to WeakAuras because people will always try to find ways to save time. Good luck with that one, designers.
Moving on to class changes, we've seen some hefty fixes to underwhelming DPS and Evoker changes from the last few builds, which is great to see. Shadow Priests seem to be locked in with their current changes, which is a little unfortunate but not horrible. As part of our upcoming 10-1 coverage, we will have all the class changes covered for you in a proper breakdown, as we always do.
Next, a really cool option that's being added is an updated loot window. Blizzard heard the problems with Need, Greed, and Pass no longer really working for the modern day, so they've added a transmog option. If you haven't got the appearance of an item and are eligible.
Transmog will show up instead of the greed option, and it will take priority over normal greed roles. It's broken on PTR right now, unfortunately, but it basically means that if you need an appearance and you roll transmog for that appearance, you will beat somebody who has already got it and is just going to try to hit the greed button so that they can disenchant it or vendor it. I know, obviously, this doesn't solve everybody's problems, say running LFR or normal just for appearances, but I do think this is a nice step in the right direction.
Okay, just a few things to round off today's video then: number one, the ultimate power potions are no longer bind on pickup so you can buy them on the auction house to use. Next here, for any crafter afraid of needing to go into the vault in Tanaris to get the raid profession recipes, do not worry; Blizzard is actually moving those over to Abris, which is pretty sweet. Speaking of professional recipes, they've finally added a whole stack of 10-11 new items onto the PTR so you can check those out, but they're not yet final.
It also includes a new upgrade item that will let crafted items work with the new Shadowflame upgrades system that we've covered in a whole bunch of videos ago. Finally, the profession window has got some pretty nice additions, actually, like the ability to be minimized, a recipe window that opens when you click a tracked recipe as well, which is really fantastic. So, all in all, it's actually been a pretty good week of news.
Another instance of Blizzard acting way faster than we are used to, basically when it comes to responding to feedback. So, yeah, keep it up, Liz, and definitely pay attention to the channel in the coming weeks for everything that you'll want to know about 10.1. We've kicked off a bit of a new initiative of how we think about things just internally so that we can be just way better at actually helping you out with the new patch. Anyway, that's it for today's video.
Big thanks for watching, of course. Head back here to the channel on Saturday for a big, juicy Ashara lore video, and until then, check out the one that we've uploaded. I will make sure it is related to that lore that I've talked about. Alright, take care. See you next time.
