PvE Improvements, Leveling Updates, Temple of Kotmogu, PvP Progression Overhaul, and more

Heroes!

Another wave of essential upgrades hits Ascension during the 3rd week of December. We’re showcasing the hottest changelog updates made to both realms over the past week, and giving some background on why these changes were made.

Additionally, for some added Winterveil Cheer, you can find a link for 10 free LP at the end of this article.

PvE Changes

Dungeons
- Added a PvE Power Requirement to queue for Specific Mythic Dungeons
  - This ensures you are not queuing into Mythics with someone in pure PvP Gear, hindering your group.
- Upgrades to Mythic+ Cache Loot Weighting
  - See Specific Section for details
- QoL Buffs
  - Corpse Runner Buffs
  - BRD Loot Clutter Improvements
World Boss Loot Upgrades
- Area 52
  - World Bosses now reward 15 Raider’s Commendations to the entire raid upon completion
  - World Bosses now have an upgraded Heroic Loot template
    - Heroic World Boss items are direct upgrades to their counterparts

Doomwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak now drop the Tome of Untold Secrets
- A currency used at the Aldor and Scryers Shoulder Enchant Vendors to get new shoulder enchants

Mythic+ Cache Loot Weighting

Mythic+ Caches receive an upgrade to increase your chances of seeing items that you actually want:

Mythic+ Tank Caches

New items have been added to the possible items Heroes can see when selecting “Tank” as their Mythic+ Cache option. Heroes can now additionally see items that meet all of the following requirements:

Have either Strength or Agility
Have Stamina
Have Hit or Expertise
Do not have Haste, Armor Pen, Critical Strike Rating, etc.

This allows Heroes to see additional items such as the Gordok Knuckleband from their Mythic+ Caches!

General Mythic+ Cache Upgrades
- Spirit and Intellect options will now have higher weight on rolling items with their respective main stat
- Agility and Strength options will now have higher weight on rolling items with their respective main stat

Quality of Life Buffs

Corpse Runner

The Corpse Runner buff now lasts for one(1) minute. In addition, for 2 seconds after gaining Corpse Runner, you are invulnerable to effects and will drop all threat.

This will prevent behavior like fears or dots cast on you in the same game-tick that you release back to the start of the dungeon to cause you to lose the corpse runner buff–or worse, run out of the instance due to being feared. The threat drop serves the purpose of keeping you out of combat for a brief moment if you have DoT effects up on current mobs and will more than likely stop mobs from chasing you back to the beginning of the instance after a wipe.

Black Diamonds in BRD

Black Diamonds will now drop x3 less often, but will now also drop in bundles of 3. This change does not affect the overall amount of Black Diamond drops, just makes them significantly less annoying to deal with when running Blackrock Depths.

Leveling, Prestige, and Draft

December brings a sizable chunk of Quality of Life Updates to Leveling, Prestige, and Draft Mode. These updates aim to reduce needless friction and improve general QoL so that you can focus on playing the way you want rather than dealing with annoying obstacles.

You can now learn talents in combat while inside of dungeons.
- With Heroes finding themselves stuck in combat for potentially the entire dungeon, this change will let you pick talents during any down time you happen to have, rather than actively forcing your group to stop to pick them up.
The Potion of Experience has been added to Tiraxis under the "Convenience Items" gossip option for Bazaar tokens.
- This paired with Auction House changes will help avoid price gouging
Aura of Experience will now persist for 5 minutes after you hit 60
- Allowing party members to catch up to you
- Helps avoid those awkward experiences where part of your group fails to hit level 60
The dungeon quests available from Khadgar’s Head are now all scale with level
- Dungeon’s scale in level already, so this will improve the experience
Substantially reduced the amount of green drops in leveling dungeons
- These greens were replaced by loot in the Dungeon caches
- Reduces loot spam while in dungeons
  - Allowing you to focus on playing the game
Mystic Scrolls
- Bosses within leveling dungeons now have a 100% chance to drop a Mystic Scroll
- Increased drop chance of Non-Worldforged RE Mystic Scrolls from all sources by x3
  - Compensates for lowered amount of green items dropping
- These changes allow you to find and explore more Mystic Enchants while leveling and apply them to whatever gear you want, rather than running into odd situations where you would end up with Legendary enchants on gear canceling each other out.
Increased weight to roll Shadowstep and Intercept in Draft while leveling by 50%
- So melees can pick up important gap closer skills more consistently
LFG system now gives 2 bags
- Will now no longer give you bags if you have max bags
Wailing Caverns Mushrooms now respawn 3x faster
- Helps Heroes better traverse through this massive dungeon
Your Book of Ascension is now automatically summoned when you enter a dungeon.
The drop chance of Legendary Lucky and Normal Skill Cards was doubled.

PvP Changes

Battlegrounds
- New Deathmatch Battleground: The Temple of Kotmogu
- Introduced a new vendor inside BG’s
  - Repairs
  - Arrows & Bullets
  - Food & Water
Arena Changes
- Arena Rating Requirement removed from current Vanilla PvP Gear
  - Goal: Get Heroes into comparable stat gear to prepare for…
- New Prestigious Vanila Arena Gear on the horizon
  - Will require Rating
  - Marginal Stat Gain
  - More what you’ll expect from long-term progression
  - See section for more details
- Significantly Increased Point Gain from Arena Wins and Losses
  - See section for exact numbers
High Risk PvP Upgrades
- Increased drop chance for essential High Risk materials
Drastically decreased cost of Honor Gear

Battlegrounds

The Temple of Kotmogu

The Temple of Kotmogu Released!
- Collect one of four ‘Orbs of Power’, which are placed around the map to gain points.
  - Holding an Orb within the center ring grants additional points
  - Holding an Orb slowly increases it’s volatility, granting you a stacking:
    - 30% Increased damage taken
    - 5% reduced healing taken
    - 10% increased damage
- Whichever team can hold the Orbs of Power for longer and get more kills wins!

The Temple of Kotmogu is live on Ascension. Dive into this new Deathmatch Battleground to slay foes, level up, and earn Honor! You can participate in this BG both while leveling and at level cap.

New Vendor

A new vendor inside all Battlegrounds now offers Heroes food, arrows, and repair options. This ensures that while you’re blasting through levels in BG’s, you’ll never accidentally queue with broken gear and have to AFK and wait 15 minutes to get back to playing.

Further Defined INT and SPI Primary Stats in BGs

Heroes with INT as their Primary Stat now heal 10% less while in Battlegrounds

Many Heroes with INT as their Primary Stat could still heal for a significant amount, while also benefiting from INT’s other bonuses such as increased Spell Power. In order to place the power of healing in the hands of Heroes who choose to make dedicated builds for it, those who select INT as their Primary Stat now heal 10% less in BGs. This helps ensure that certain specs can’t ‘do it all’, and increases the value of Spirit based builds that Heal in BGs

Arena

Removed the Rating Requirement for current Vanilla PvP Gear paving the way for prestigious gear in the near future.
Significantly increased the Arena Point Gain from Wins and Losses

One reason for this was the difficulty of gear progression between geared and non-geared Heroes. To help close the gap, a shift in the way Arena gear progression works on Ascension is taking place:

Vanilla Arena Gear will now no longer require rating
To replace it, new Prestigious Gear comes to Vanilla

Starting soon, Prestigious Vanilla PvP Gear will arrive in Vanilla to serve as the highest tier of Arena Gear. Each set piece comes with a modest stat increase over its original counterpart, and marks you as someone capable of hitting the highest echelons of Arena competition. Prestigious Gear will have a rating requirement, serving as more of what you’d expect for long-term, meaningful progression.

With this gear on the horizon, all current Vanilla PvP Gear has had its rating requirement removed. This allows all Heroes to gear up as best they can to compete for the new Prestigious gear.

The goal of these changes is a long term aim at providing fairer fights and a better competitive Arena experience. Heroes looking to get their hands on Prestigious Gear will need to rely on their skill and builds to compete, more than just out-gearing their opponents. Those who come out on top will earn clear, obvious markers of their skill and ability by collecting gear worthy of their elite status.

Additionally, the Arena Points you gain from both winning and losing matches has been significantly increased. This makes fighting in the Arena more valuable than ever, and reduces some of the friction of gearing up. Here are the numbers:

Arena Victory:
- 1v1 = 20 -> 50
- 2v2 = 40 -> 75
- 3v3 = 70 -> 100

Arena Loss:
- 1v1 = 10 -> 30
- 2v2 = 20 -> 45
- 3v3 = 30 -> 60

These changes are two big reasons to jump back into the Arena and compete for gear and glory!

High Risk PvP

The chance to obtain Nether Materials in High-Risk has been increased!

Increased the drop chance of Nether Seeds when gathering herbalism nodes in High-Risk
Increased the drop chance of Nether Lodes when mining ore nodes in High-Risk
Increased the drop chance of Nether Leather when skinning beasts in High-Risk
Increased the drop chance of Nether Weave when killing humanoids in High-Risk

Additionally, increased the chance for Nether Materials to drop as higher qualities. Before you would see far more uncommon materials than higher qualities. Now you will return to town with significantly more Rare and Epic materials in your bags.

When Nether Herb drop, you are now 4x as likely to obtain the Rare version and 6x as likely to obtain the Epic version Nether Herb.
When Nether Meats drop, you are now 4x as likely to obtain the Rare version and 6x as likely to obtain the Epic version Nether Meat.
When Nether Leathers drop, you are now 2x as likely to obtain the Rare version and 3x as likely to obtain the Epic version Nether Meat.
When Nether Cloths drop, you are now 2x as likely to obtain the Rare version and 3x as likely to obtain the Epic version Nether Cloth.

Mystic Enchantment Updates

Moving onto changes that’ll affect all Heroes, a plethora of Worldforged Enchantments were updated to improve consistency and gameplay across the board.

Introduced Hints for the following Worldforged Mystic Enchantments:
- Shadowy Charge
- Frosty Charge
- Fiery Charge
- Arcane Charge
- Hoarfrost

Introduced Worldforged Caches for the following Enchantments:
- Dark Domination
- Dual Innervation
- Ragefire Nova
- Knifestorm
- Devour Mind

The Rotting Breath Worldforged Enchantment now has a 100% drop chance.
Earthborer’s Acid now works for all tanking stances

These updates should serve to improve the discovery, acquisition, and gameplay of these Worldforged Enchantments for all Heroes that seek them out.

Auction House Updates

When a seller lists an item on the Auction House, they pay a small deposit. If the item sells, then they get the deposit back. If the item fails to sell, they lose that deposit of money. This is a Blizzlike feature designed to encourage sellers to list items for a fair market value. However, until recently, Vanity Items were unintentionally circumventing this deposit cost. This led to sellers cornering the market by buying out and hoarding the entire current stock of an item so that they could re-list and continue to relist at a higher price for an indefinite amount of time with no repercussion to overpricing an item. The safeguard was missing.

Now, Vanity Items have a deposit cost.

Vanity items will now actually calculate a Deposit cost when posting auctions. Deposit cost is usually calculated by Vendor sell price, for vanity items since they have no sell price this made them have low deposit cost which made them very suspectible to overt flipping. Deposit cost for vanity items will be calculated like this: 2% Listing Price at 12 hours, 4% Listing Price at 24 hours, 8% Listing Price at 48 hours up to a max of 20 gold.
At the same time, it won't be too punishing for vanity items that have a low sell rate but particularly high value.

This discourages sellers from listing vanity items at absurd prices, because they will continue to lose money if the item doesn’t sell. The community can now passively regulate the cost of vanity items by refusing to buy them at high prices, encouraging sellers to sell for reasonable prices or lose money to deposit fees.

This system will continue to be monitored as time goes on, but the introduction of the deposit fee on Vanity items should allow for the prices of them to lower to more comfortable values.