Hey everyone, it's Kelani here. This week has a lot going on in terms of class changes, buffs, and nerfs for both the current patch and the upcoming patch 10.5. The first dragon flight patch is already underway, with significant changes to talent trees and the addition of new content, including a new mountain trans monk to collect and a new dragon flight trial for players to try out before purchasing dragon flight. Make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to stay up-to-date on all the happenings in WoW. There's a lot to cover, so let's dive into everything that's happened this week in the game.
To start with, we have two rounds of class changes. The first one will be pushed through with the weekly reset, so that's on Tuesday or Wednesday to the live servers. This is arguably more important because we'll see those changes much sooner. The second set of changes will be on the PTR. Yes, you heard me right, the public test realms are being updated already with patch 10.5, so our first patch for dragon flight is already in the pipeline, which is great news for the overall expected pacing of this expansion.
The class changes coming with the weekly reset are fewer in number and aren't quite as big, so let's go through them quickly.
To start with, resto druids will see quite a few buffs, including a 5% increase to all their healing, which will definitely be a welcome change. This change does not apply to PVP. For death knights, there are some general buffs to talents and passives, and some more targeted buffs for unholy specifically. Durations have been increased, damage has been increased with quite a few key abilities, and overall they should be doing quite a bit better with these changes in place.
Evokers get a quick buff to their disintegrate damage, a 15% buff to their main single target Damage dealers should hopefully be doing a bit better in single target. Marksmanship hunters will see a tiny nerf, with 3% damage reduced across the board. I guess they were doing a bit too well, but just a bit.
Fire mages are getting buffed yet again, with their entire lineup of key abilities seeing up to 12% buffs, which should translate into a nice damage increase overall. Frost is going to see the same treatment, with up to 15 of their main rotational abilities as well as splitting ice also getting buffed. Splitting ice will now deal 80% of normal damage to the secondary target, up from 65%.
Continuing with the minor nerfs, windwalker monks will also see a 3% damage reduction for all of their abilities, and priests will see the mana cost of power word shield slightly increased.
There are also some big buffs for shadow priests, with 10% buffs for a lot of abilities and some going up to 20%. Shadow priests should be in a much better place going forward.
Rogues are up next, and this should come as no surprise to anyone, but there are a few nerfs here. To start with, resounding clarity will animate charge two additional combo points, down from three. There are also general across-the-board nerfs for all three rogue specs, with 3% for each spec, so all three rogue specs will do just a tiny bit less damage when the next weekly reset rolls around. Throw enhancement into this mix as well, because they will also be given a 3% damage nerf across the board. I kind of like these smaller nerfs to see how things go with minor tuning, and then big things can be addressed later, like maybe in an actual patch.
Warlocks also made the list, Affliction warlocks will see some very nice buffs, up to 20% in some cases, including a 15% boost to malefic rapture. That should help them quite a bit. Destruction warlocks will see a 5% increase to chaos bolt, so that's going to be nice.
And then, last but not least, we have the warriors. They will see a 3% damage buff to everything, and then some extra bursts to mortal strike and execute. The fury two-set bonus was also given a nice little buff. And that's all for the currently planned class changes for this coming weekly reset, but the fun is only just beginning.
Let's move on and take a look at the changes coming with patch 10.5. Some of these are absolutely huge, especially in comparison to what we just talked about. Druids are actually getting more of a rework, which could be good or bad depending on how you like druids right now. So, to start with, all druids are going to learn swipe at level 10. That's been added to the baseline kit. Swipe and brutal slash damage will be reduced by 50%, but there's a new talent later on that increases the damage by 100%, so that'll get you back to where you were before. There are so many new talents and talents being moved around in the class. Three new connections are being made, and overall the important spells and abilities will hopefully be in easier to reach areas. For balance specifically, the tree has been redesigned, so again, lots of changes and things moving around. Lunar eclipse no longer increases the crit chance of starfire, but instead increases its AOE damage. A few talents have been buffed, and some have been removed entirely. Guardian will see the same treatment. The tree is being shifted around a whole bunch, abilities are being made baseline, and there are a lot of new talents to comb through to see if anything fun and exciting is waiting for you in the new patch. Now, feral hasn't been left out either. There are a few nerfs to various bleed talents, some bonuses thrown in for ferocious bite talent, and a whole lot of talents are just moving around. So your trees are going to look very different from most druid specs as we head into this new patch. I'm actually really surprised. Usually these kinds of big changes are left for the major patches, but patch 10.5 is coming in swinging.
So far, restoration druids will also see quite a few changes. The way temporal anomaly works and provides shields is being changed completely. It will now apply shields to everyone it passes through, with reduced effectiveness beyond five targets. The orb is going to be faster, and it also won't slow down when it hits an ally, if I'm reading this correctly. So it's going to be zooming over your group. The cooldown was also increased, so you won't be able to spam it quite as much.
There are also a handful of other changes to talents, and some slight buffs for marksmanship hunters. Salvo is being redesigned to be an active button, from what I understand. So instead of your multi-shot or volley just automatically applying explosive shot every 45 seconds, you can now actively use salvo to make your next multi-shot or volley trigger the same effect. This would just give you more control over when and where those extra explosive shots go. In addition to that, double tap is being removed, which I am very sad to see. In its place, we're getting a simple 10% reduced cooldown to aim shot and rapid fire. Kind of boring, especially considering we're losing a very iconic ability. There's also a small buff to calling the shots, which is nice, I guess. Moving on to mistweaver monks, they have a lot of talent changes. Some talents are being removed, those are at the bottom of the list, but then there's a long list of new talents being squeezed in here. There are some new connections being made, and then revival healing is also being increased by 100% while not in the raid. That'll be helpful for every other type of content.
For paladins, only holy is in the list so far. Blessing of winter has been redesigned to now restore 1% mana for two seconds. Avenging Crusader is now going to cost holy power, with a much shorter cooldown but also a much shorter duration. So that's a potentially interesting change. And then there are also a few other changes thrown in that will hopefully give you an extra boost. Priests will see a lot of changes too. For class changes, there's a new talent that turns psychic scream into more of a horrify, so they're going to stand in place instead of running around everywhere. Then there's also some bug fixes by the looks of things, but discipline seems to be the main focus right now. There are so many changes to abilities, talents, and passives here. Spells or talents have been redesigned, extra functionality has been added in for spells and abilities, and it looks like discipline priests should hopefully be a bit better with these changes in place. Holy has a few changes as well, though nowhere near the long list of discipline. A few talent changes, some slight talent movements, nothing too crazy either way.
Coming our way in patch 10.5 is going to revolve around the talent trees for the most part, which is really exciting to me. This is definitely what I was hoping for: change up the talent trees, get things to a really good place, and just smooth everything out, especially for the specs and classes that didn't get a lot of time and attention before dragonflight came out.
Now, there are a few other things in these PTR notes that might be of interest to you. To start with, we will finally get the promised transmog changes that we've been waiting for for quite a while now. Both gray quality as well as white quality items will now be available as transmog options. These items will also become bound on non-equip, so be prepared for that. I guess you won't be able to get the transmog and then pass the item on or sell it. This will hopefully also include a lot of quest rewards that you may have disposed of back in the day, but we'll have to wait and see just how much of this is going to be awarded retroactively.
Either way, this opens up a lot of new transmog opportunities, especially for more basic transmog options and looks. There are a lot of fancy-looking clothes, those are holiday-related transmog options too, or literal cosmetic options that were white quality, so they should hopefully be included as well. So the wait is nearly over, as well as those changes, we will also see the addition of enchant illusions being made available on Legion artifact weapons. I believe this popped up very briefly in the past but was rectified or removed quite quickly, so this will be enabled in patch 10.5 as a purposeful addition to the game. If you really love the idea of using a Legion artifact skin but hated that you couldn't apply an enchant illusion to it, well this should be a nice addition for you. But perhaps the most interesting addition coming with patch 10.5 is the new trading post.
This is a brand new feature, which is kind of crazy considering this patch doesn't look to be a major content patch, but we're seeing some big content additions nevertheless. So the trading post is going to pop up in ogre bar and Stormwind at the previously changed locations that we thought might end up being stables. I doubt anyone could have actually guessed that we would see an entirely new way to play the game being added in these locations. The trading post sounds quite simple: you can earn a brand new currency throughout your adventures and you trade that in for some shiny goodies.
What kind of goodies, I hear you ask? Well, a lot of different things. It seems like Indeed, we don't have an exhaustive list yet, but we do have some samples of the kind of things to expect. This is a brand new transmog set that comes in two colors: the Sun and Moon Warden sets. One is silver and white, while the other is green and gold, which is very typical of the Warden aesthetic. However, these will be actual transmog sets that we can earn in-game via the trading post, and they look absolutely amazing. Alongside them, a new mount has also been data-mined, also in two colors. This is the Ashida Harbinger of Doom, which is literally a spectral tiger in Warden armor with Warden blades adorning the saddle. How amazing does that look? Pairing these two cosmetic options together yields some fantastic results too. There are a lot of other rewards that have been data-mined as well, including pets, like this magenta cloud serpent. I'm sure Wowhead will continue to determine anything and everything they can find related to this new feature. But how exactly is this all supposed to work? Well, from what we know so far, you will earn the Trading Post currency called Trader's Tender by completing monthly activities in-game.
The first activity is quite simple: just log in. If you log in every month and head to the Trader's Post, you can get 500 Trader's Tender every single month. Then, by completing various activities in the new Traveler's Log, you can earn up to an additional 500 Trader's Tender. So, half of the entire thing is actually just logging in, and if you want to work for some more, you can. We'd have a small preview of that Traveler's Log so you can see there are various categories on the left, like dragonflies, dungeons and raids, holidays and events, other, pet battles, professions, PVP, and quests. So, you should be able to do any and every objective in those categories to work towards this new currency. On screen, we can see imbibing Zanzil's slow poison, resurrecting players, showing some love to fallen dragons, and showing some love to the dragon aspects. That's in the other category, so they're really opening this stuff up.
I guess all in all, I imagine it's going to be very, very easy to cap out this currency each month, and that kind of seems to be the point. This is what our list of goodies could look like In any given month, and it also gives us a better idea of what kinds of rewards are on offer, as well as a very interesting button towards the bottom. So, here we can see some unique transmog options, some new ensembles, and right at the top, the celestial steed.
So, we know for sure that mounts will be included in here that were only previously available in this door, at least in some capacity, which is really interesting. But with so many things on offer, how can you buy it all with only 1,000 coins? Well, you can't. It looks like you're going to have to choose which one you want to go after in any given month. And all of these rewards are going to be rotating every month as well. But there are two important factors to consider here. The first is that the dev team said that the monthly rewards will cycle and they will come back around, so this isn't a case of if you don't get it in this one month, you can't ever get it again from the trading post. Things are going to rotate back in, so it's not a question of whether you can get it again, it's a question of when you can get it again. That's really nice in a system that would otherwise incite mass FOMO.
And then the next thing is right down at the bottom: drag an item here to freeze it and prevent it from expiring. So, if there's something you absolutely want but you just can't quite afford it this month, you can save it for next month down at the bottom and ensure that you can pick it up right away. So, there's a lot of flexibility in how you can earn these rewards, which is nice to see, and it looks like they're designing it with that in mind instead of adding that later on. Now, I've seen a lot of folks call this a battle pass.
They're actually introducing a battle pass into World of Warcraft, and while it doesn't look exactly like you might expect a battle pass to look, with a reward track and you know, you work through all the events and the rewards bit by bit or whatever, I don't think it's actually too far off The nice thing about this implementation for WoW is that it isn't being used as an extra source of revenue. You don't have to pay for this "battle pass," but you do have to log in to take advantage of it and you do need to have an active subscription. So, while it is not a new revenue source, it definitely is a subscription retention feature because if you want these rewards, you will have to keep up with your subscription. It's almost like a loyalty program, and if it turns out to be fun with some good rewards, I'm actually super happy with this approach.
There are already some amazing sets being data-mined, so here's hoping this simply gives us more things to do and more things to collect in-game. But what excites me the most about this whole thing is that we have a patch 10.5 PTR update already in the wings. It's not going to be a major patch by the looks of things, so don't expect a new zone or even a continuation of the current storyline, and I doubt we'll even see a new dungeon or anything like that. But we will see some interesting additions to the game and at least some pretty impactful class changes and balanced tuning, so this isn't an empty patch by any means. This is only the very first glimpse we have of what this patch could contain. They can add anything they want over the next month or so that will probably be available for testing, and I imagine we'll see the patch go live sometime in late January or maybe early February.
It honestly depends on how much they try to cram into the patch. The more they squeeze in, the later it will most likely release. But I think this is great for the potential pacing of this expansion. The single greatest problem that Shadowlands had was its pacing. You can honestly ignore almost everything else if we had faster patches, faster responses to issues, and just more things to do that actually respected your time and game. So, you might think this patch is too early and the expansion has only just begun, but I think it's actually a good thing.
Oh my gosh, they're trying to run things through already, and you're not entirely wrong. But you do have to remember that no matter how small a patch may be, it's going to need testing so that's time on the PTR for things to get ironed out. This means the PTR needs to be updated way before the patch is actually scheduled to go live. We won't see this patch hit live servers for awhile, but it's really nice to see that Blizzard has some things lined up for us already.
Pacing is key in my opinion, and I really hope Dragonflight does better than Shadowlands did. In the last little bit of this video, another interesting update we had this week is the introduction of a Dragonflight trial. This does come with quite a few restrictions, but it will allow anyone who has not yet purchased Dragonflight to give it a good poke and experience some of the most impactful parts of the new expansion. Basically, it's just a trial period to see if they want to jump in for real. So with this, anyone with an active subscription can create an evoker and play through the Forbidden Reach intro quest lines.
Then, you can also play through the Waking Shores up to level 63, including all of the stories and quest lines there. You can unlock and play around with dragon riding, look at how professions work in Dragonflight, and even enter two dungeons: The Roomy Life Pools and the Knockout Defenses. So that's all pretty neat. Getting to play with dragon riding especially is definitely the best part of that, and I'm glad they included it in the Dragonflight trial. This trial is only going to last until January 2nd, though, so you can play Dragonflight for free over the holidays if you haven't decided to buy it yet. That's great news if you have some friends who are still on the fence.
But that's all in the big news for this week so far. So, that's it for this video. What do you think of the Trading Post and its monthly rotation of goodies and activities? Are there any sets or mounts that you hope make their way into the Trading Post? And what do you think of all those Clan Glass buffs and nerves? Leave all your thoughts in the comment section below. A big thank you to all of our supporters over on Patreon and all of our members here on YouTube. You can see the names floating by on screen. If you'd like to add your name to the end of every video and get a special shoutout at the start of the next video, you can find links in the description over on Patreon, or click the join button just below this video.
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