Heroes!

The time has come for another Classless Update. We hope you're sitting comfortably, because we have a lot to get into. As always, this article will highlight some of the changes and the full changelog will be posted separately.

Mana-crazed

• [New Legendary Enchant]: Mana Fiend - Increases your Intellect by 30% and makes your Arcane direct damage spells replace your next auto-attack with an attack that consumes mana to deal Arcane damage. Dealing damage this way has a 50% chance to make you go into a Mana-crazed Delirium, increasing your spell power by 10% of your Intellect, stacking up every second. While active your Arcane spells cost no mana, but maintaining the effect prevents you from gaining mana from other sources and drains your mana every second. When you drop below 20% mana the Delirium ends. The mana drained is restored to you over 12 seconds as you come back to your senses.

This Legendary Mystic Enchant teaches you how to tap into your mana reserves to boost power and deal extra damage. The more mana you have, the more power you’ll amass. You will however have to move into the fray of battle, risking life and limb in the process. This is not for the faint of heart.

If Mana Fiend sounds a bit too risky for you, there are also safe ways for you to capitalize on your high Intellect or Spirit stats through conversion talents. Many of these have received a buff to make them more powerful: 

• Mind Mastery now increases spell damage by 3% of your total Intellect, up from 2%.
• Nature's Blessing now increases your healing spell power by an amount equal to 4% of your Intellect, up from 3%.
• Holy Guidance now increases your healing spell power and holy spell power by 4% of your total Intellect.
• The Lunar Guidance Mystic Enchant now increases your spell damage by 3% of your total Intellect, up from 2%.
• Improved Tree of Life now increases your healing spell power by 4% of your total Spirit, up from 3%.
• Spiritual Guidance now increases your healing spell power by 4% of your total Spirit, up from 3%.

Hungering for Blood

Hunger for Blood has been reworked. This ability has been an obligatory pick for many PvE players for a long time, taking away precious Ability Essences without really changing up how they play. The new version reads as follows:

• Enrages you, increasing all Physical and Nature damage caused by 10%, lasting for 5 seconds per bleed effect you have applied to the target. Also gives you a movement boost for 5 seconds, increasing your movement speed by 15% per bleed you have applied to the target. (This ability has a 30 second cooldown)

Our goal with changing this is to turn a mandatory and fairly generic ability into a specialized and flavorful one that feels fun to play with and opens up new build possibilities. 

If this sounds interesting and you want to try out the new Hunger for Blood but aren’t sure what type of build to play with it, we’ve got you covered.

[New Legendary Enchant]: Blood and Guts - Transforms your Eviscerate into Eviscerate (Disembowel), a finishing move that uses a Dagger to make a swift incision, causing your target to take bleed damage over 6 seconds. This damage scales with modifiers to Eviscerate and can critically strike. Your Mutilate deals bonus damage against Disemboweled targets. Casting Execute attempts to finish the target off, dealing bonus damage and triggering Remorseless Attacks (if known).

The Demolisher

[New Legendary Enchant]: Demolisher - Your Mortal Strike is transformed into Demolishing Strike, an ability that deals 130% weapon damage and which scales with Mortal Strike modifiers. In addition, it demolishes the target's defenses, increasing the physical damage they take from your attacks by 1%. Demolish stacks up every time the target is critically hit in melee, and upon reaching 10 stacks empowers your next ability:
Riposte: Generates 2 additional combo points and slows the targets attack speed by an additional 10%.
Mongoose Bite: Doesn't trigger its cooldown and is guaranteed to critically strike.
Expose Armor: Reduces the targets' armor by an additional 10% and increases your armor penetration by 20% for 20 seconds.

Fingers of Death

[New Legendary Enchant]: Fingers of Death - Your Fingers of Frost now also grants 2 stacks of Fingers of Death for 15 seconds, which causes your next Ice Lance to also launch a Shadow Lance. Shadow Lance hits grants a stack of Touch of Death 15 seconds, which increases the damage of your next Vampiric Touch by 75%, stacking 2 times. In addition, your Frostbolt now applies Dark Winter to the target for 15 seconds, stacking 3 times, causing you to deal 3% increased periodic Shadow damage to the target.

Tidecaller

[New Legendary Enchant]: Tidecaller - Your Healing Wave heals for 25% more and applies 3 stacks of Tidecaller's Boon on the target. This effect increases the healing they take from your periodic Nature healing spells by 10% per stack, but reduces the healing they take from your Healing Wave by 5% per stack. Tidecaller's Boon stacks up to 15 times and your periodic Nature healing removes one stack.

New Epic Enchants

[New Epic Enchant]: Arcane Displacement - Fully channeling Arcane Missiles on a target will trigger Arcane Displacement, instantly teleporting you behind them and striking them with your weapon dealing Arcane damage. This effect has a 15 second cooldown.

[New Epic Enchant]: Punisher - Increases the critical strike chance of Riposte by 30%. When used on players, your Riposte triggers Unrelenting Assault. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds and requires the final rank of Unrelenting Assault.

[New Epic Enchant]: In the Zone - When your Unfair Advantage deals damage to a player it also gives you a shield absorbing magic damage. The absorb value of this shield is tripled if Ghostly Strike is active. This effect can only occur once every 6 seconds and requires the final rank of Unfair Advantage.

[New Epic Enchant]: Impending Doom - Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death increase your Shadow periodic damage dealt to the target by 20%. This effect lasts for 3 ticks.

[New Epic Enchant]: Into Darkness - Forms a strong bond with the Shadows, teaching you a stronger version of Vanish. This ability is useable while feared and will clear any fear effect on you and put a shield on you absorbing magic damage.

[New Epic Enchant]: Ward of Light - Taking critical damage from a spell has a chance to reset the cooldown of your Divine Storm. In addition, dealing damage with Divine Storm now dispels one magic effect from you.

Eclipsed by Eclipse

• Eclipse now only increases the critical strike chance of Starfire and the damage of Wrath by 30%, down from 50%
• Baseline damage and spell power scaling from Wrath have been increased by 20%.
• Lunar Guidance now also increases the critical strike chance of Starfire by 3/6/10%.
• Improved Moonfire now also increases the critical strike chance of Starfire by 5/10%.

Eclipse is an iconic Balance druid talent, allowing druids to combine Wrath and Starfire in a powerful and unique way. It is in fact so powerful that these two abilities feel pretty lackluster when used outside of Eclipse. These changes shift some power out of Eclipse and adds it back baseline or through talents, so that it will be easier to make use of Wrath and Starfire in a classless way. 

Let's get physical

A number of melee abilities have had their power increased. The purpose of these buffs is to make them stronger against monsters, while PVP mods will keep them from becoming too overpowering against players. For Mutilate, damage has been shifted away from the Poison requirement, so that it will deal good damage without requiring poisons.

• Mutilate now deals 130% weapon damage, up from 100%, and its bonus damage is increased by 30%. The damage increase against Poisoned targets has been reduced to 10%, down from 45%.
• Backstab now deals 215% weapon damage, up from 195%.
• Crusader Strike now deals 120% weapon damage, up from 105%.
• Divine Storm now deals 130% weapon damage, up from 110%.

Coming Soon: Arena Frenzy

It’s time to grab your strongest gear, enlist a friend and start practicing, because this weekend will mark the start of a brand new weekly Arena 2v2 event! The exact details of this event will be outlined in a News Article coming later this week, but the summary is:

• The Arena Frenzy is a weekly 2v2 event that will be active for an hour on Saturdays
• While the event is active, participating in rated 2v2 games will still give arena points and also award additional honor points
• At the end of the event, participants will receive a lootbox that can contain Mystic Orbs and Runes, Mystic Enchant Scrolls, and a chance for a Limitless Noggenfogger Elixir
• The player(s) with the most rated 2v2 wins during the event will become that week's Arena Frenzy Champion

Will you be the next Arena Frenzy Champion?