League 4 Complete Overview

Champions of Azeroth!

League 4 is on the horizon, and there is so much that couldn’t fit into the video. This article contains all relevant content coming with the League in detail so that you’re fully prepared to conquer the Trials of Azeroth!

League 4 releases Friday, May 26th @ 2:00 PM EST!!

What is a League & What Happens to my Character?

Leagues are temporary realms where new content and features are tested before they come to core realms. League 4 will be a brand new fresh realm lasting 2 months, and once it’s finished you’ll be able to move your character to either Area 52 or Thrall. Your current characters on Season 8 and Area 52 will not be affected, and you won’t lose any progress. Any character you make on League 4, will merge at the end of the League to either Area 52 or Thrall to enter The Burning Crusade!

As with all Leagues and Seasons, all characters you make on League 4 will merge at the end of the League to either Area 52 or Thrall. You never lose progress, and once the 2 month league wraps up, you’ll have the choice to transfer to either Draft or Free Pick to enter TBC.

• League 4 is a Fresh Realm
• Play for the 2 month league, then merge all characters into core realms
  • Area 52 for Free Pick
  • Thrall for Draft
  • You choose!
• Take your League 4 character into TBC on Season 8 or Area 52!
• No progress is lost
• Current characters all stay on all other realms

Overview Bullet points

• 3 Ways to Play
  • Free Pick
  • Build Draft
  • The Original 9 Classes
• 15 New Spells and Abilities
• Hardcore Trials (Ascension 1-Life Hardcore Modes)
• Hero Architect Creation Improvements
• Scourge & Legion Invasions
• League 4 Progression
• Reinvigorated Open World
  • Buffed Creatures
  • Upgraded Draw Distance
  • AI Quest Voices
  • Gathering and Crafting EXP Overhaul
  • Upgraded Level Scaling Zones
  • Hotspot Locations
• High Risk PvP
• Mythic+ Updates
  • Affix Overhaul
  • Vanilla Leveling Dungeons
• New Group Finder
• Addressing Power Creep
  • Healing Rework
  • Mana Costs
  • Armor Differentiation
  • Intellect and Spirit Balance
  • Base HP Improvements
• AoE Visualizers
• Legacy Legendary Mystic Enchantment Rework
• New Talents: Draconic Knowledge & Power of the Elements
• Experimental Woodcutting for Lumberjacks
• Preorder and Vanity Sync
• Updates for Area 52 
• Updates for Thrall
• Updates for Conquest of Azeroth Alpha
• Updates for Wrath of the Lich King Alpha

…and that’s just the bullet point list. Let's dive into it!

3 Ways to Play

Free Pick

Free Pick returns in its first League since Mal’ganis! Forge your own custom Hero, choose any spell, ability, and talent in the game, and craft a unique, personal build. Explore Classless WoW to the fullest and leave your mark on Azeroth!

Free Pick arrives with a a couple new upgrades:

Masteries Updates

• All spells within a mastery are now 1AE down from 2AE, and Masteries now cost 1 AE.

This opens up more abilities for your chosen masteries, and you’ll have the ability to pick up different options to deal with different situations. This leads to emergent gameplay: those moments where you need to adapt to a unique situation on the fly, rather than tackling every situation the same way.

This is an upgrade for Heroes looking to get multiple spells within the same mastery to deal with unique situations. And if you only want 1 ability within a mastery, the cost is the same as before.

New Abilities

Additionally, Fifteen new spells arrive on Free Pick to enhance your Hero. These will be available on League 4, and will additionally come to Thrall with TBC.

• Flame Ascendance
• Cloudburst Totem
• Divine Star
• Frozen Orb
• Meteor
• Mass Invisibility
• Gloomblade
• Angelic Feather
• Grappling Hook
• Roll the Bones
• Ironfur
• Light of Dawn
• Flourish
• Sundering
• Void Eruption

Build Draft

Build Draft arrives as a groundbreaking new feature that captures the limitless potential of free pick, allowing you to fully harness it with the click of a button. Build draft streamlines and focuses the progression of building your classless hero: it’s a shift to playing your character rather than setting it up. With Build Draft, you’ll pick a build, get everything you need, and start your adventure immediately. 

To start Build Draft, speak to Stony Tark and choose it. Then, select between Tank, Healer, or DPS. Once you do, you’ll pick between three curated cross-class builds. Make your choice, and your adventure begins. 

As you level up, you’ll automatically learn both spells and talents, and any Mystic Enchantments you need are applied straight to your gear. You don’t have to find them, or extract them, or apply them: you just get them. And if you get the build to level cap, you’ll automatically unlock all the Enchantments used straight to your collection. This opens up a brand new way to collect entire sets of Mystic Enchantments at once.

When you choose a Build Draft, you’ll know for certain that you’re getting a great build. This lets you jump into the adventure faster and puts the focus on playing. Additionally, it’s a great way to try builds you might never have thought to play knowing that they’ll be powerful and effective.

• The best way to learn new builds and archetypes
  • Choose between 3 complete, hand curated builds
  • Pick 1
  • Start your adventure
• Mystic Enchantments are auto-applied to your gear
  • Stay even if you swap gear
• Removes friction from starting your adventure
• Try new builds!
• Unlock entire sets of Mystic Enchants in your collection at once.

Featured Builds

With the upgraded Featured Builds tab, you can instantly load up a complete build of your choice specifically designed to be played from level one all the way into end-game. Just like Build Draft, you’ll automatically learn all of the necessary spells, talents, and mystic enchants you need as you level up. Additionally, all build draft builds will show up in the featured builds tab, so if you know what archetype you want to play you can pick it directly.

• The best method to jump into the Archetype you want to play
  • And learn its ins-and-outs
• Complete builds on the Hero Architect
• Give you the relevant RE’s just like Build Draft
• Are designed to be played from 1-60 and into the end game
• Guaranteed good builds

In addition, upgrades to the Hero Architect creation menu make it easier than ever to create a leveling build with a new simple, straightforward design. Now you can just click a + sign to add spells and talents to that level, rather than needing to drag a bar back and forth.

Featured Builds and Build Draft completely change the pacing and flow of Ascension: making your adventure less about knowing exactly how to make a complex build, and more about MASTERING YOUR build. With this, everything changes: you’re guaranteed a great build to take through leveling into the end game. You’ll spend less time picking the exact correct skills, RE’s, and talents, and more time playing your fantasy hero. Finally, when you’re ready to start tweaking the build to your personal tastes, you can leave Build Draft to become a full free pick hero, allowing you to customize the build and truly make it your own. From leveling, all the way to end-game, pick a build, load it up, and GO.

The Original 9 Classes

Play as the original 9 classes in League 4!  

In League 4, you’ll be able to choose to experiment with any one of the original 9 classes integrated into Ascension. Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Hunter, Shaman, Priest, Warlock, Paladin, Druid: play your favorite classic class and tackle Ascension’s custom Vanilla+ environment.

• Play any of the original 9 classes
  • But NOT Death Knight, that’s for Ascension WOTLK!
• The Original 9 Classes are primarily introduced to experiment with the leveling process and participate in Hardcore Trials.
• True to their original design, based on WOTLK 3.3.5
• Play them at end game, or optionally transition into a Free Pick Hero at 60
• This is a test, and will not be picture perfect
  • Think of it as a fun experiment
• Original Classes will have access to Epic and lower RE’s, but not Legendaries
  • To avoid guaranteed game-breakage
  • The Original 9 Classes cannot use the Mystic Enchanting Altar
    • Scrolls only!
• Expertise has been converted to Hit/Crit to match Ascension itemization.
• All Class quests are available to obtain
  • Class quest abilities such as Summon Voidwalker, Redemption, Berserker Stance, and more.

This is a big step for Ascension, and though it did not take much development time it creates an opportunity to attract a whole new audience of players who might otherwise have never given Ascension a try. League 4 is an opportunity to experiment with how well they thrive in Ascension’s custom Vanilla+ environment.

Ascension Hardcore Trials

Hardcore Trials arrive to expand your adventures and provide limitless ways to challenge Azeroth. This new system is Ascension’s take on Hardcore 1 Life mods for Classic WoW, and aims to provide a unique, fresh experience to your adventure whether you’re playing solo or with friends. 

Hardcore Trials bring your nostalgic adventures into a new age, imbuing them with new life. Heavily inspired by the current hardcore community and iterating on our Ironman mode introduced 3 years ago in Season 4, Trials are curated sets of rules and challenges that add danger and excitement to your adventure. If you complete this set of challenges, you’ll earn stylish rewards that show off your skill, but if you die, you die in real life your character is dead forever. 

There are 3 broad categories of Trials:
 

• Hardcore
  • 1 Life Challenges!
  • This is the same as our previous Survivalist mode introduced in Season 4, but renamed to be more understandable.
  • Grouping with other hardcore.
• Ironman
  • Solo Self-Found
  • No grouping
  • No help from external sources
• Nightmare
  • Limited Lives
  • Increased Difficulty

Once you reach level cap, you’ll complete the challenge, and can either choose to stay in Hardcore Mode, or you toggle off your hardcore mode. But beware: if you die before toggling it off you are Dead Forever.

Trial Architect

The Trial Architect lets you create your own Trials to share with the community. Choose from hundreds of challenges, make the Trial you want and share it with the world! Other Heroes across Azeroth can then attempt to complete your trial, offering a new, unique way for the community to shape the world. Additionally, Players who create the most enticing Trials may find they end up integrated into the curated trial list!

• New Trials to Reinvigorate the World
• Choose your Ideal rules
  • Group
  • Solo
• Create your own Trials with the Trial Architect
• Hundreds of New Challenges
• Make the world dangerous

Scourge & Legion Invasions

Scourge and Legion Invasions are wreaking havoc during League 4! These invasion points spawn all across Azeroth, adding danger and excitement to the open world and creating hotspots for Heroes to flock to. If you overcome them, Invasions offer epic rewards based on your participation. At level cap, these rewards are equivalent to the upgraded Call Board Caches, which offer current tier normal raid epics.

When an Invasion Point spawns, it’ll show up on your map. When it does, head to the location to challenge it. You’ll need to slay the creatures terrorizing the zone, and if you kill enough of them, you’ll spawn a Boss. Slay the Boss for big rewards!

Invasions appear in two brackets:

• 1-59 Flex
• 60

For lower level invasions, the creatures will scale to your level: ensuring all Heroes can participate in them when they spawn. They’ll award relevant loot for your level, and serve as a great way to band together, gear up, and meet new allies.

At level 60, Invasions become a primary means of progression for Heroes. Based on how much you contribute, taking down a Boss will award loot chests equivalent to the upgraded Call Board Caches! This guarantees big loot, and helps Heroes gear up during the League.

Finally, taking down Invasions will also award Argent Dawn Commendations, which you can exchange at their quartermaster for exclusive cosmetic rewards.

• Invasion Points spawn across Azeroth
• Slay hordes of Undead and Demons to summon a boss
• Take the boss down to earn current tier epic loot!
  • From 60 Invasions
• Invasions are NOT forced PvP, but could be integrated into High Risk during the League.
• Scourge and Legion Invasions coming to Thrall!
• Scourge invasion rewards
  • Get rewards from the chest
    • Get it based on participation
    • More chests the more you participate
  • Get argent dawn commendations
    • Spend at the argent dawn quartermaster for cool cosmetics

League 4 Progression

League 4 will have expedited progression so Heroes can explore it at their preferred pace. A faster timeline will see content released over a 2 month span. This ensures Veterans have plenty to sink their teeth into, while more laid-back adventurers can jump into their favorite content when they want to. With multiple ways to get geared for the end-game including the Call Board, Invasions, and Personal Loot Caches, everyone will be able to enjoy the league at their pace!

• Progress through Classic
  • Start to Finish
• Faster Timeline
  • Content released over a 2-month span
  • Gear up through personal loot caches, call board caches, and invasion caches
  • Timeline will be announced on the day of launch.
• Merge into Area 52 or Thrall for TBC!
  • If you like Free Pick, you can transfer to Area 52 at the end of the League
  • If you prefer Draft, you can go to Thrall
  • …and enter TBC!

Reinvigorated Open World

One of League 4’s primary focuses is restoring adventure, excitement, and danger to Azeroth. Several upgrades aim to reinvigorate the Open World and restore it as a fun and exhilarating way to level up.

Creature Stats

Over time, a lot of changes have been made to creature scaling. These changes have been reassessed, and monsters are being restored to their original power. Here are the details:

• Restored the original Health of Monsters in the Open World
• Restored the original Damage of Monsters in the Open World
• Restored the original armor of monsters in the open world

Though Heroes will still find themselves strong on their adventure, Azeroth should feel a lot more deadly and exhilarating as you embark on your adventure. 

• Critters are now Skinnable

Heroes who are evil and very bad can now find Ruined Leather Scraps when skinning critters at the cost of marking you as a terrible person. You monster.

Upgraded Draw Distance and Performance Settings

Draw Distance on Ascension has been massively increased, and culling has been minimalized. Heroes should be able to see better and further without random objects disappearing in the open world. Upgraded draw distance is part of an ongoing effort to breathe new life into Azeroth and make adventuring feel epic.

If at any point you need to increase your FPS, you can now also remove shadows in the interface.

These options are available to adjust in the settings.

AI Quest Voices

A new AI Voice Mod arrives to breathe life into your adventures! This mod, created by Mr. Thinger, adds immersive AI voices to all Quest NPCs in Azeroth.

You can read the full article on this new addon here. If you’re the type of Hero that likes that classic RPG feel, be sure to get this mod!

https://ascension.gg/news/azeroth-has-a-voice-and-its-ai-generated/402

Gathering and Crafting Experience Overhaul

A massive upgrade to Crafting and Gathering experience revitalizes this playstyle and makes it a legitimate way to level up on Ascension. Not only does it cement professions as a great way to gain exp, but it also unlocks tons of crafting and gathering centric trials like Artisans Guild or Self-Made.

Here are some of the changes:

• More expensive crafts will now give more exp
• Higher skill requiring craftables and gatherables will now grant more exp
• Every single craftable experience has been recalculated

This means if you craft a rare or epic item, or if you start crafting items at higher profession levels, you’ll get an appropriate amount of experience to match. This makes crafting rare or higher-level gear feel rewarding and valuable.

Upgraded Level Scaling Zones

As part of Ascension’s ongoing efforts to make leveling in the Open World appealing and rewarding, more Horde and Alliance zones receive level scaling capabilities. This allows Heroes to travel to their favorite zones/quest hubs and explore them start to finish, rather than out-leveling them half way through. Zones like Redridge, Darkshire, Stonetalon Mountains, etc. will now scale with your level so you can enjoy them at your pace.

These level scaling zones make it completely viable to travel to new destinations and quest hubs, because you’ll know those zones and quests will scale with you, and you’ll get to spend a good amount of time there if you choose.

Note that contested zones like Ashenvale, Southshore, or Arathi Highlands do not scale in order to ensure the integrity of PvP.

Hotspot Locations

Hotspots have been revived and cleaned up:

• Hotspot Bonus Experience has been increased from 50% to 100% bonus exp.
• Point-of-Interests were updated to be more consistent when displaying on the world map.
• Hundreds of poor locations were removed from the pool

Mob Fanning

• Mob Fanning has been implemented across Azeroth! Now when you’re getting swarmed by baddies, they’ll stand the appropriate distance apart. This feature will need some iteration to get perfected.

Level Pacing Improvements

A general reduction to experience gain aims to make the leveling experience better paced for all Heroes, especially those entering Ascension for the first time. This change comes with several others which make leveling faster for veterans who prefer that speed.

• Heirloom Items can now be upgraded with prestige tokens to add bonus EXP gain to each piece
  • This upgrade grants 3% bonus experience
  • This experience is multiplicative

This allows Veteran Heroes to eventually level faster, while newer heroes have a more steady pace. Additionally:

• Drastically increased the experience given by Dungeon Quests
• Reduced the EXP given from dungeon mobs

This supports the Open World experience by making dungeons extremely beneficial to run once for quests before returning to the open world.

Improving High Risk PvP

One of League 4’s goals is to bring back High Risk Leveling and make it better than ever before. New improvements increase the value of the High Risk Open World, make adventuring into it rewarding, and clean up the end-game High Risk experience to make it great. The overarching goal is to ensure High Risk is a net benefit for Heroes who choose to venture into it, as well as simplifying the experience to get back to the core high risk, high reward dichotomy of this game mode.

High Risk Leveling:

• High Risk is now available at level 15
  • Letting you play the way you want to play sooner
  • Getting more in alignment the forking point between doing Battlegrounds, Dungeons, or playing in the Open World.
• High Risk now grants 10% bonus experience.
• High Risk victims while leveling will now drop gear again
  • While leveling there is no Tier system for loot drop, this will only apply to max level, as gear permanence starts to matter more.
• You can now swap between Risk Modes in 10-20 towns.

End Game High Risk:

• No More Events: they are just always active
  • Pivoting back to more of what worked in S7
• Drop rates are drastically increased
• Uncommon materials now stack up to 200 and are not lost on death
  • This guarantees every adventure into the open world has a reward that matches the risk
• *NEW* High Risk Recipe Merchants
  • Secret Merchants now reside all over Azeroth
  • Sell Rare and Epic High Risk Recipes
  • This is in addition to the existing ways to farm them (PvE)
• Greedy Demons have had a complete automated loot rework and now have improved loot that evolves during the progression of the realm.
• Crow’s Cache progression has been more seamlessly automated to ensure it always has great progression relevant drops.

New Merchants hidden throughout the world offer High Risk recipes to adventurers who find them! This helps Heroes get their hands on these essential High Risk recipes in a new way, providing more opportunities to engage with High Risk and further weave the game mode into the economy of Ascension.

Bloody Jar Changes

• It now costs Gold to convert items to Bloodforged

With the addition of new gear acquisition methods for PvE, there was a lack of balance between Soulbound and Bloodforged. This change aims to increase the value of the High Risk Open World. 

Over time, there has been a significant increase in the volume of gear obtained from PVE, this had the downstream consequence of all unneeded gear being bloodied and then sold for incredibly small amounts and nullifying the open world. This change to the Bloody Jar seeks to fix this.

Finally:

• Disenchanting a High Risk item now ALWAYS results in a High Risk enchanting material

Mythic+ Updates

Big Mythic+ Updates arrive with League 4!

Mythic+ Affix Overhaul

An overhaul to Mythic+ aims to balance Affixes to make them varied, engaging, and balanced. The goals are as follows:

• Make M+ Affixes more balanced across weeks
• Make M+ Affixes feel as varied as possible while still being balanced
• Make sure no week feels overly punishing or very easy due to affix combos

The general approach being taken to make these changes is as follows:

• Separate Group Affixes into two distinct categories: Tank & Group Damage
  • Each week will have one affix from each of these two new categories
• Balance Champions so that all types of healers can deal with them more evenly
  • This ensures many types of healers can thrive in Mythic+
• Rearrange affixes so that each week features one Tank damage affix, one Group damage affix, one General affix, and one Champion
• Increase week-to-week diversity of Affixes

Mythic+ Vanilla Leveling Dungeons

Dive into your favorite vanilla leveling dungeons in Mythic+! The following Vanilla Dungeons can now be tackled as Mythic+ versions:

• Ragefire Chasm
• Wailing Caverns
• The Deadmines
• Shadowfang Keep
• The Stockade
• Blackfathom Deeps
• Gnomeregan
• Razorfen Kraul
• Scarlet Graveyard
• Scarlet Library
• Scarlet Armory
• Scarlet Cathedral
• Razorfen Downs 
• Uldaman 
• Zul'Farrak 
• Maraudon Wicked Grotto (Purple)
• Maraudon Foulspore Cavern (Orange)
• Maraudon Earth Song Falls (Inner)

These dungeons have been tuned up to max level and feature both affixes and Mythic Champions! 

Additionally, they don’t bloat the item pool with new items. This is to prevent it from being too hard to get the item that you want, keeping your Mythic+ itemization experience the same, but with new dungeons to explore. That said, you can get Heroic and Mythic 0 Versions of your favorite vanilla dungeon items, so there are a few interesting things to check out!

Mythic+ levels will be uncapped in this League. You will be able to attempt to progress up to Mythic+ 255 from the very first release. Although gear will remain capped relative to current progression (see the timeline to find when different levels of Mythic+ Unlock), Heroes interested in challenging themselves can push for 255 from the very beginning of the league!

Finally, these dungeons will be used in the future for both TBC and WotLK as additional Mythic+ dungeons to make the experience varied and exciting. This sets the stage for dungeons to be rotated out periodically to keep things fresh.

• Vanilla Leveling Dungeons available in Mythic+
  • Tuned to Max Level
  • Mythic Champions
  • Affixes
• Will be used for Mythic+ Seasons in the future for TBC and WOTLK
• Did not bloat the item pool with new items
  • This is to prevent it from being too hard to get the item you want.
  • Heroic and Mythic versions of the items are available
  • Only iconic items from these dungeons will be available as M+ versions to avoid item bloat.
    • More community-favorites can be explored in the future.

New Group Finder

A new Group Finder arrives to help you find other adventurers interested in tackling the same things you want to. 

With Group Finder, Heroes can easily create a listing for their desired activity such as Dungeons, Raids, World Bosses, or PvP, and specify their roles and difficulty. Other players can then browse through these listings, find the one that's right for them, and join up instantly! Whether you’re searching for allies for a Mythic+ dungeon or grouping in High Risk to take down a World Boss, you can post and search through dozens of listings.

You can read the full Group Finder Article right here: 

https://ascension.gg/news/group-finder-is-live-find-your-party/400

Addressing Power Creep

• Over time there has been an accumulation of a lot of changes
• This league begins to question assumptions of changes made over the years to get back to a healthier state of the game.

Healing Rework

A huge Healing Rework has been rolling out over the past several months. The goal of this rework is to move healing to a better place by moving away from one-shot raid mechanics and bringing in more facets of attrition. There's a lot of variables that are playing into this, but right now raw healing is comparable to that of the Cataclysm expansion, but classes in Cataclysm had 5-10x more health. The result of this systemic imbalance really ends up hurting healer diversity, nullifies a lot of healer gameplay, and impedes raid mechanic design.

One major goal of this League is to look at more of the broad relationship between damage output from raids and overall healing to start, and then work from that foundation. Here are the changes made so far:

• Increased contribution of damage reduction from PvE Power from 24% to 49%
• Adjusted the healing curve of the Classless Hero for max level Healing Reduction of 55%
  • This will ensure healing while leveling isn’t too weak, while moving it in the right direction for end-game.
• Healing spells cost 10% more mana.
  • This change aims to allow those who invest into Spirit Itemization to have a more “controlled” and sustained mana replenishment, with the trade off of a smaller mana pool.
  • While intellect healers will have a larger mana pool, allowing them to spam more on demand expensive heals while having lower “controlled” and sustained mana replenishment.
• Divine Aegis and Sheathe of Light can only trigger ONCE per heal
  • Provided huge safeguard and huge blanket value for AoE heals.
• Increased cooldown of Halo to 90 seconds from 60 seconds.
  • To give it a more clear place as a super strong long cooldown heal with 0 target cap
• Growing Light now hits 3 targets instead of 5.
  • Holy Light is now one of the most effective and strongest heals. This Legendary Mystic Enchantment spread it to 5 others, increasing the heal’s effectiveness by a whopping 100%.
•  Faith Rekindled - Epic RE
  • No longer increases the duration of Renew when it over heals.
  • Renew increases your ally’s healing taken from your heals by 1% and an increased 5% from your Renew. This effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 4 seconds.
    • Faith Rekindled provided an immense amount of value in many builds. Didn’t heal? Duration was increased. If the duration is increased enough times, add in other modifiers such as Holy Concentration and you had a renew that could last for quite a while. 

Mana Costs

This is a reversion of a previous change. Ascension is now using other methods to balance mana distribution and regeneration between intellect and spirit gear without circumventing mana almost completely as a mechanic.

• Increased the cost of all mana abilities by 20%
  • Noteworthy: This is a revert of a previous change made 1-2 months ago that is no longer needed.

Years worth of small mana tweaks added up into big issues in the current game. These have been reverted, and the above changes bring mana back more in line with classic levels. We’ll be keeping an eye on these changes as the League begins.

Armor Differentiation

Years ago, changes were made to armor to reduce the gap between different armor types so that Heroes didn’t feel forced to wear Plate just because the armor value was so high. This was a necessary change for classless, but likely too overzealous. Like the above mana changes, armor changes have led to issues in the current rendition of the game by diminishing the meaning and impact of wearing different types of armor. The need for this gap to exist at all is drastically reduced in modern Ascension, so these armor changes are being reverted back to more Blizz-like values. 

• Increasing the Armor Gap between gear
  • To be more in the direction of Classic
  • Differentiating Armor Types
    • Cloth
    • Leather
    • Mail
    • Plate
• This means:
  • Open world will be more dangerous
  • Difference between armor types will matter more
  • Cloth gear will be worse against physical but stronger against casters
• Removed the additional threat stat from Shields and baked into tanking stances
  • To reduce clutter on items

Spirit and Intellect Balance

The Spirit Stat (not the primary stat) has experienced a significant amount of power creep over the years in the form of major talent changes, base mana changes, itemization changes and more. This league begins to explore resolving the immense power creep for this stat while improving the viability of intellect.

Itemization Updates

• Gear with heavy intellect level 40 to 60 has its intellect buffed by 8%.
• Gear with "heavy spirit" (more than half of its intellect as spirit) had its intellect decreased by 12%.
• Gear with not heavy spirit and high intellect (or any intellect of that matter) have had no changes.
• Items strictly with Mp5 have had their spellpower adjusted and buffed to make them more desirable.

This update experiments with shifting the healer balance and dichotomy of intellect and spirit and ensuring they are both viable, meaningfully distinct, and reduces power creep.

Ability and Talent Updates

• Molten Armor now gives intellect-to-crit rating instead of spirit-to-crit rating. This once exclusive spirit tool can now be picked up for a little boost by both spirit and intellect users.
• Intellect boosting talents like Arcane Mind, Lunar Guidance and Mental Strength have been upgraded:
  • Arcane Mind no longer increases the cost of your spells and abilities.
  • Lunar Guidance no longer is tied to Starfire and Starsurge critical strike chance. It's now global but less percentage overall. (Nature's Majesty has had a compensatory buff)
• Draconic Knowledge now grants you a buff based on your Tamed Dragonkin’s Aspect and the intellect they have.
  • All pets now inherit a portion of your highest main stat to boost their intellect. This ensures that getting stronger gear will also boost the mana pool of your pet.

Base HP Change for Classless Heroes

Over time, the base health of Classless Heroes has been increased to contend with various aspects of Azeroth. However, this has resulted in massive health pools early on while leveling, which in turn makes the Open World feel weak and unengaging. In line with League 4’s goal of breathing new life into the world, the Open World is becoming more dangerous, exciting, and meaningful while leveling with the following two Base Health changes to Classless Heroes:

• The Base Health of Classless Heroes has been reduced 1-59
• Classless Heroes now gain a big chunk of Base HP at 60, bringing it back to current levels
  • The net result is no change overall, but less health while leveling

This restores a bit of danger to the Open World, and will make leveling more engaging now that you can’t run into twelve quillboars and face tank them all at the same time without dying.

AoE Visualizers

AoE Visualizers arrive to help you tell the difference between friendly and enemy AoE. This new visualizer option puts circles around the area affected by spells like Blizzard, Flamestrike, Hurricane, or Rain of Fire. Additionally, these visualizers apply to Boss Spells, so you know where to not stand in the fire.

Enemy AoE Visual

Friendly AoE Visual

Personal AoE Visual

Legacy Legendary Mystic Enchantment Changes

Fel Strike

• Teaches you Fel Strike. Your direct damage and healing abilities have a chance to give you a stack of Fel Skies. 
• You can consume 5 stacks to activate Fel Strike. Fel Strike deals Chaos damage shared between up to 3 targets.

Abiding Fel Energy

• Teaches you Unleash Fel Energy. Your direct damage and healing abilities have a chance to give you a stack of Abiding Fel Energy. 
• You can consume 5 stacks to activate Unleash Fel Energy. Unleash Fel Energy puts a pool of fel energies on the ground, standing in it will empower your abilities and make them deal additional Chaos damage to your target.

Blessing of the Divines

• Blessing of the Divines has new powerful effects. It will now either increase the targets health by 10% and reduce their damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds, restore resources like energy to up to 5 players, increase the casters and your targets haste by 5%, heal up to 5 friendly targets or put a healing over time effect on up to 5 friendly targets.

Elemental Destruction

• Changed the damage type of Energy Bolt to Nature damage. 
  • Previously was Firestorm: (Nature + Fire)
• Increased damage of Energy bolt and Energy Bolt (Lightning Overload) to reflect this change
• Increased damage of Elemental Destruction buff to 14% per stack. Up from 10%.

Frozen Chaos

• Your Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold and Frost Shock critical hits grant you a charge of Frozen Chaos, and reset the cooldown of Chaos Bolt.
• During Splintered Chaos, your damaging hits with Chaos Bolt will increase the number of targets hit by your next Chaos bolt cast. This effect is only active during Splintered Chaos and gives you the ability to hit up to 8 targets.
• The buff Frozen Chaos now causes your Chaos Bolt to deal 25% (5% against players) more damage and trigger no cooldown. However, It no longer grants additional bonus spell power scaling.

Booming Thunder

• Elemental Blast hits now grants 4 stacks of Booming Thunder.
• New Effect: Consuming the effects of your Reverberation talent now grants you a stack of Booming Thunder and reduces the cooldown of your Elemental Blast by 2 seconds.
• Booming Thunder’s buff now lasts 15 seconds.

Knight of the Eclipse

• Lunar Knight increases damage of your next Starfire by 60% per stack. Down from 70%.
• Solar Knight increases damage of your next Wrath by 60% per stack. Down from 70%.
• Decreased damage of Eclipse Strike by 20%.
• Decreased damage and scaling of Solar Burn by 20%.

Elemental Lord

• Elemental procs are now triggered in a semi-sequential order. Once you’ve triggered an element (Fire/Frost/Earth), you cannot trigger it again until you’ve triggered all 3.
• Elemental Air can now trigger from auto attacks, and now has a 2 second internal cooldown.
• Elemental Frost can now trigger from auto attacks, and now has a 1 second internal cooldown
• Elemental Frost now restores 5% mana to your, up from 3%.
• Elemental Earth now reduces mana costs by 40%, up from 20%.

Righteous Flames

• Fire spells now consume 3 charges of your Inner Fire.
• Holy Fire (Righteous Flames) now grants 5 charges of Inner Fire per enemy hit. It refreshed all charges previously.
• Righteous Flames now increases the damage of your next Holy Fire by 20% (5% versus players). Up from 12%/4% respectively.
• Righteous Flames now lasts for 15 seconds. Up from 10.
• Casting Inner Fire now also triggers an explosion around your target.

Seed of Life

• Reaching 8 stacks of Seed of Life, no longer triggers a Bloom. Instead, you can now manually trigger a Bloom by casting the spell, “Bloom”.
• Bloom heals all allies affected by Seed of Life within 40 yards, consuming stacks of Seed of Life in the process.
• Seed of Life now increases the healing of Bloom by 40% per stack. The healing of Seed of Life has been reduced by roughly 60%. 

Mending Tide

• Mending Tide’s ground effect is now a buff tied to the player you cast Riptide on, however it is now target capped to 5 players. (this means the AoE healing moves with the player you cast Riptide on)
• Mending Tide’s healing has been increased significantly. In addition, Mending Tide’s healing is now also a smart heal. 
• Players healed by Mending Tide will now receive 15% increased healing from Chain Heal lasts 3 seconds.

Wild Felfire

• Wild Felfire now transforms your Chaos Bolt into Chaos Bolt (Wild Felfire) Dealing Chaos damage instead of Fire damage. Chaos damage is a combination of all spell schools and scales from the highest modifier to any school.
• All spells with a cast time against monsters reduce the cooldown of Chaos Bolt (Wild Felfire) by 1.5 seconds. This effect shares a cooldown with Emberstorm.
• The triggered area of effect damage from Wild Felfire now deals Chaos damage.

Benevolent Crusader

• Benevolent Crusader can now trigger from any direct heal cast on an ally.
• Dealing damage to an enemy with Smite, Holy Fire, Penance or Exorcism will trigger a Holy Nova on the target. This effect can only occur once every 3 seconds.
• Fixed an issue where stacks of Benevolent Crusader would reduce the amount of missiles fired by Penance. It will now correctly hit an ally/enemy 3 times per cast.

Time Warp

• Your damaging spells with a cast time against monsters now extend the duration of Time Distortion by 1 second and reduce the cooldown of Blink by 2 seconds.
• Time Distortion now reduces mana cost of your spells by 10% in addition to its previous effects.
• Time Warp now extends the duration of Time Distortion by 3 seconds.

Paratrooper

• Paratrooper now teaches you Paratrooper if you have Disengage learned. This ability causes you to jump upwards in the air, instead of backwards. Shares a cooldown with Disengage.
• While Paratrooping, your Hunter Shots versus monsters will now trigger Target Spotted! 
• Target Spotted! Lets your Hunter Shots trigger Orbital Arrows on the targets Spotted.
• Orbital Arrows deals 150% of your Ranged Weapon Damage as physical damage up to 5 nearby targets.
• Your Hunter Shot casts now reduce the cooldown of Disengage by 1.5 seconds. This effect can only occur once every second.
• The aforementioned effects only work/trigger against creatures/monsters in PvE!

Low Tide

• Low Tide now has a 15 yard jump radius when Riptide is spread.
• Low Tide now spreads riptides at full duration instead of the current duration of the target of Riptide.
• Low Tide now has a smart target selection when spreading Riptide. This means when you spread Riptide, it will try to jump to the lowest health player.
• The chance to trigger a Riptide spread has been increased to 100%, up from 60%. 
• Low Tide will now only spread Riptide when you cause effective critical healing with Healing Wave.
• Fixed an Issue where when spreading a Riptide with Low Tide you could consume the empowered riptide buff, the stack generation from spread Riptides is unchanged.

Holy Ascension

• Holy Ascension now allows you to individually use all 3 empowerments on monsters. All three effects are consumed if a Holy Ascension buff is consumed on a player. 
• Holy Ascension now causes Exorcism to trigger a holy explosion hitting up to 5 targets, and increases the damage of your next Holy Fire by 15% per target struck.

Divine Purpose

• Renamed the damage version of the Divine Purpose buff to Divine Judgement. 
• Divine Judgement increases your next Penances damage by 75% per stack stacks up to 3 times. 
• Being affected by Divine Judgement also makes your Penance hit up to 5 nearby targets with holy damage scaling with Penance. This cannot hit the target you’re channeling Penance on. An identical effect has been set up for Divine Purpose.

Holy Supernova

• Holy Supernova will now bless party and raid members struck, immediately removing 1 negative curse and magic effect. This cleansing repeats every 2 seconds, for a total of 8 seconds.
• Being damaged by a player removes the blessing effect. 

Battle Fervor

• All effects that previously triggered on Battle Shout have been moved to Charge.
• If you know Charge you now learn Battle Charge.
• Battle Charge causes physical damage to your target, and applies Crushing Impact, increasing the physical damage dealt to surrounding targets by 10%, and the damage of your Victory Rush by 100%.
• Battle Charge has no minimum range, but can only be used against creatures.
• Striking a monster affected by your Crushing Impact with a physical ability that triggers a global cooldown, reduces the cooldown of your battle charge by 3 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 3 seconds.

Unbound Spell Slinger

• Your direct damaging abilities have a chance to trigger a Lesser Clearcasting, granting you 2 stacks. This can only occur once every 4 seconds.
• Lesser Clearcasting reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 30%. 
• Consuming Lesser Clearcasting triggers an Arcane Burst on your main target, hitting up to 4 additional nearby targets.

Spell Slinger

• Your direct damaging abilities have a chance to trigger a Clearcasting, granting you 2 stacks. This can only occur once every 8 seconds.
• Consuming Clearcasting triggers an Arcane Burst on your target.

Unrelenting Wrath

• Unrelenting Wrath is no longer a random triggered buff. Instead, you’ll generate stacks of Unrelenting Assault during combat, which will allow you to activate Unrelenting Wrath at will. 
• Now passively increases the damage of your Frenzy Shot by 100%, and increases the duration of Beastial Wrath and The Beast Within by 4 seconds.
• Your direct damage Hunter ability casts have a 50% chance (25% against players) to grant you a stack of Unrelenting Assault. Once you reach 5 stacks of Unrelenting Assault, you can consume them to activate Unrelenting Wrath on your pet, increasing its damage dealt by 30% for 8 seconds. Activating Unrelenting Wrath now also resets Frenzy Shot.

Harbinger of Flame

• The internal cooldown of Harbinger of Flame is now per target instead of on the player
  • This means it can proc individually on 10 different targets instead of 1
  • 4 Seconds uptime
  • 4 seconds ICD.
• The proc has been changed to be single target, but functions as AOE if used with AOE spells due to the way its ICD and proc rules now work.

Warcry

• Using Warcry now debuffs nearby enemies with Battle Fatigue making them take 10% more physical damage.
• Hitting a monster affected by Battle Fatigue reduces the cooldown of Warcry by 5 seconds 
  • (2 seconds for players).

Aimed Explosive Shot

• The base damage of Aimed Explosive Shot has been increased by 100%. 
• The cooldown has been increased to 12 seconds, up from 6 seconds
  • It still shares a 6 second cooldown with Explosive Shot. 
• Aimed Explosive Shot now has a target cap of 10 targets, previously it was uncapped.

Deadly Bite

• Now teaches you Savage Blade, a new ranged shot that can be cast within melee range dealing 230% weapon damage and applies a stack of Deadly Bite. 
• Casting Savage Blade now grants you Deadly Instinct
  • Increases the damage of your next Counterattack or Mongoose Bite by 20% against monsters. Lasts 15 seconds and has 4 charges.
• The Bleed Effect of Deadly Bite increases the damage dealt Raptor Strike and Savage blade by 12% per stack applied to the target.
• Your Deadly Bite bleed has a chance when it deals damage to lower the cooldown of Savage Blade by 4 seconds and grant you a buff called Sharpened Blade.
  • Sharpened Blade increases the damage dealt by your next Savage Blade by 40% (10% against players), stacking up to 5 times.
• New Interaction: While your target is affected by Deadly Bite, casting Glaive Toss on that target will proliferate the Deadly Bite bleed to nearby enemy targets within 8 yards.
  • This requires the final rank of Improved Glaive Toss.

Defias Gunslinger

• Now reduces the global cooldown of Mongoose Bite by 0.5 while equipped. 
• Raptor Strike no longer consumes Gunslinger's Strike
• Grape Shot now deals school damage instead of weapon damage and scales from ranged attack power.
• Grape Shot now deals more damage to your primary target.
• Pistol Shot now reduces the cooldown of Mongoose Bite and Raptor Strike by 1.5 seconds, up from 0.5 seconds.
• Pistol Shot can now benefit from Piercing Shots bleed

Arcane Thunder Seer

• Static Arcane Missile can now trigger on targets up to 36 yards away.
• Thunder Seer now grants 1 stack of Arcane Thunder per missile. This means 5 stacks of Thunder Seer grants 5 stacks of Arcane Thunder per missile.
• Arcane Thunder now stacks to 25.
• Removed the flat damage reduction of Arcane Missiles.
• You now gain Arcane Overload when your Arcane Missiles channel ends
• Arcane Overload reduces the damage of Arcane Missiles until you cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning and reduces their cast time by 50% and the global cooldown by 0.75 seconds.

These changes are designed to reward proper weaving of Lightning and Arcane Missiles channels and rewards you with big Lightning Bolt damage in a way that maintains the rapid casting of the build.

Cryrotherapist

• Lesser Frozen Light is now triggered by any direct Holy Heal.
• Icy Penance now only consumes 1 stack of Spirit Frost when the channel finishes. That means you will need 2 stacks to trigger the heal on all three strikes
  • Because the channel finishes before the final missile hits.
• Reduced the damage to healing transfer from 5% to 2% (This is following the Healing Squish numbers that other heals have been reduced by.)
• Icy Spirit (The heal triggered from Icy Penance while you have Spirit Frost stacks) has had its base heal amount reduced by 50%. However it now scales from your Healing Power.
• Increased the % damage transfer from Icy Penance to Frozen light targets from 10% to 25%.

Stormbringer

• Added scaling to the periodic ground effect damage.
• Increase base damage of the periodic ground effect damage and direct damage
• Lowered the internal cooldown to 6 seconds, down from 9.
• Reduced slow from 50% to 25%

Felborne

• Now teaches you Fel Meteor.
• Melee abilities grant you Meteoric Impact. 3 stacks max.
• Direct damage casts grant you Meteoric Fire. 3 stacks max.
• You can cast Fel Meteor after reaching a combined total of 5 stacks between Meteoric Impact and Meteoric Fire.

Epic RE Mystic Enchant Changes

Razorlash

• Your rogue and druid finishing moves now have a 5% chance per combo point consumed to proc Bloodied Green Thumb.
• Bloodied Green Thumb reduces the cast time of your next Razorlash by 100%.

Arc Aim Concentration

• Arc Aim Concentration has gained an additional effect. 
• Your Arcane Spell casts now grant you 1 stack of Arc Aim Shot, 1 sec ICD. Arc Aim Shot increases the damage of your next Arcane Shot by 15%.

Arcane Infusion

• Arcane Infusion has been changed from being a RNG based proc, to now being a stacking buff that triggers upon hitting max stacks. Using Arcane Shot now gives a stack of Arcane Infusion. Hitting 3 stacks of Arcane Infusion procs Missile Barrage.

Hydra’s Venom

• Critting with Hydra's Venom now gives you a stack of Hydra's Fang. Hydra's Fang can have up to 12 stacks, and using a Physical direct damage melee ability consumes 3 stacks to deal additional Nature damage to your target.

Poison Rain

• Poison Rain is now usable in Cat Form. 
• The channel duration has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 9. 
• The damage now ticks every 1 second, rather than every 1.5 seconds.
• Target cap has been increased from 6 to 10 targets.
• Targets afflicted by Poison Rain receive a stack of Catalyst, increasing your damage with instant Poison and Deadly Poison by 10% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.
• Cooldown has been reduced to 60 seconds, down from 8 minutes. 

Holy Hammer Nova

• Primed by Light AND Bathed in Light are no longer consumed by casting Holy Nova.

Mayhem

• Mayhem now further reduces the cast time of Soulfire by an additional 0.2 seconds, per combo point on the target. 
• For example, 1 combo point is now a 0.8s cast reduction, up from 0.6s. And 5 combo points is now a 4s cast reduction, up from 3s. 
• Using Dispatch now has a 20% per combo point consumed, to grant you a buff reducing the cast time of your Mayhem spell by 1 second. However, the range of Mayhem is also reduced by 15 yards when this is in effect.

New Moon

• Dealing damage with a spell that has a cast time extends the duration of your Moonfire by 3 seconds, and inflicts the target with a stack of Waxing moon.
• Reaching 5 stacks of Waxing Moon empowers your next Moonfire, causing it to trigger an explosion at your target dealing chaos damage to up to 5 nearby targets.

Bloody Maelstrom

• Mortal Strike can now trigger Bloody Maelstrom, in addition to Bloodthirst.

Freezing Blood

• Freezing Blood’s duration has been reduced to 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds. 
• Activating Cold Blood now causes you to hurl a Frostbolt at the target. 
• Cold Blood now grants ranged, melee, and spell crit.

Wraith

• Dealing direct damage with Wraith now has a 20% chance per combo point to reduce the cooldown of your Shadow Dance by 2 seconds. 
• Wraith debuff now increases your Physical, Shadow and Bleed damage against the target by 10% (5% against players). 
• Range was reduced by 15 yards.

Armor of Faith

• Removed the Power Word: Shield requirement from this enchantment
• Casting Greater Heal or Flash Heal on a target affected by Weakened Soul now grants them Armor of Faith.
• The next time the target is struck in combat, they’ll instantly heal for 10% of whatever the heal was that gave them Armor of Faith

Shadow Word: Gore

• Shadow Word: Gore’s damage is now increased by 8% for each bleed you have on the target.

Soul Siphoner

• Now heals up to 5 raid members with the lowest health.

Conservation

• Conservation now stacks 5 times, down from 10.
• The MP5 granted from Conservation now scales with your level.
  • Grants 60 MP5 at level 60 and 70 MP5 at level 70.
• Each stack of Conservation now also grants you 5% Mana regeneration while casting.
• Conservation stacks are no longer removed upon overhealing a target.
• Conservation stacks are now granted if you effectively heal an ally at all. 
  • Previously it would only trigger on heals that caused 0 total overhealing.
• The duration of Conservation has been increased to 6 seconds, up from 5.

Fire Fire Fireball

• Fixed a bug where Brain Freeze would not make Fire Fire Fireball instant.
• The fireball cast by Fire Fire Fireball (say that 3 times fast) is no longer able to proc other procs
• Increased the damage of the fireball cast by Fire Fire Fireball by 30%

Harnessed Energy

• Your Arcane Blast debuff now increases Arcane spell damage by 25% and mana cost of Arcane Blast by 400%.
  • Up from 20%/250% respectively.
• The debuff can now stacks to 5, up from 4.
  • Allowing you to harness 5 stacks of 25% bonus damage
• No longer increases the stack count of Missile Barrage
  • This change expands Harnessed Energy’s use into all types of Arcane builds.

Perforation

• Rend now increases the duration of your Garrote by 1 second per tick. Down from 1.5 seconds.

New Epic Mystic Enchants

[Oracle of the Eclipse] - Your Eclipse talent is transformed into Oracle of the Eclipse (Solar) and (Lunar). 

• Triggering either version of Eclipse now restores 16% of your missing mana, and grants 1 stack of Blessing of the Moon. You can consume 1 stack of Blessing of the Moon to empower your next Holy Shock or Riptide, causing them to trigger Oracle's Blessing. 
• Oracle’s Blessing: Casting Holy Light will activate Lunar Eclipse. Casting Healing Wave will activate Solar Eclipse. Reduces the Healing done by Holy Light and Healing Wave by 20% while active. 
  • Each effect lasts 15 sec and each has a separate 30 sec cooldown. Both effects cannot occur simultaneously. 
  • Lunar Phase makes Healing Wave benefit from Sanctified Light, Divine Aegis and Healing Light. 
  • Solar Phase makes Holy Light benefit from Ancestral Awakening, Ancestral Healing and Improved Healing Wave. 
  • Both Lunar and Solar require the last rank of each of the corresponding talents to gain their benefits.

[Quick Draw] - Teaches you Quick Draw (Requires Steady Shot), Quick Draw has a 10 yard range with no minimum range and has no cast time, but can only be used after dealing damage with Counterattack or Mongoose Bite. Your Improved Steady Shot talent now also affects Mongoose Bite and Counterattack at half the value granted.

[Mongoose Fury] - Dealing damage with Mongoose Bite now grants Mongoose Fury. Mongoose Fury increases the damage dealt by Execute by 20% and the chance to trigger Sudden Death is increased by 10%. Your Execute criticals reset the cooldown of your Raptor Strike. This requires the final rank of Sudden Death.

[Shieldsmasher] - Your Dispatch and Counterattacks grant you a stack of Shield Smasher. Shield Smasher increases the damage of your next Colossus Smash by 30% and extends its duration by 2 seconds per stack, this stacks up to 5 times. Shield Smashers lasts for 20 seconds.

[Momentum] - Your Grappling Hook grants you additional momentum, increasing your movement speed by 40% and the damage of your rogue abilities by 10% for 8 seconds.

[Natural Zeal] - Healing with Holy Spells reduce the cooldown of Nature's Swiftness by 3 seconds and grant you Harmonized Zeal, upon reaching 5 stacks, your next Divine Favor will also increase your spell haste by 5% for 12 seconds.

Healing with Nature Spells reduce the cooldown of Divine Favor by 3 seconds and grant you Natural Zeal, upon reaching 5 stacks of Natural Zeal, your next Nature's Swiftness will increase spell your critical strike chance by 5% for 12 seconds.

Does not work with Nature’s Flow or Beacon of Divinity

[Corrupted Shiv] - (Requires Corruption) Your Shiv spell now applies Corruption on the struck target, and increases the damage of your next direct damage Shadow spell by 20%.

[Deadly Follow-up] - Requires a Dagger in your off-hand

Your Shiv is transformed into Deadly Follow-up.

Deadly Follow-up functions of a charge system, and has a 66% reduced global cooldown.
These charges have a 5-25% chance to be generated when using a rogue finishing move, depending on the amount of consumed combo points.

Using Deadly Follow-up applies both your main hand and off hand poison twice and does a minor amount of physical damage.

[Ol’ Bloodsurge] - Your Mongoose Bite, Counterattack, Mortal Strike, Execute, Raging Blow, Whirlwind and Bloodthirst hits have a 33/66/100% chance of making your next Slam have no cast time, make it cost no rage and ignore 50% of the targets armor. This effect has a 6 sec cooldown.

Consuming Bloodsurge increases the damage of your next Hunter or Warrior direct damaging ability by 10%.

Does not work with In Sword We Trust, or Gurubashi Berserker.

[Frenzied Growth]. - Wild Growth now has a 4 second duration and heals 2 fewer targets but its healing is increased by 100%. (This means Wild Growth will do approximately 28% less healing per cast. However it will do its healing 28% quicker.)

[Steel Wind] -Transforms your Whirlwind into Steel Wind. Steel Wind hits with both weapons and can only be used when you have at least 10 stacks of Winds of Steel. Your Physical abilities have a 30% chance to give you a stack of Winds of Steel, and auto-attacks have a 10% chance to give you one stack. Winds of Steel increases the damage of Steel Wind by 15%, max 20 stacks. Herod’s Legacy cannot be used with Steel Wind equipped.

[Chasin’ the Rush] - Your rogue & druid finishing moves has a 3% chance per combo point spent to activate Moment of Clarity for 5 seconds or reduce it's remaining cooldown by 6 seconds. Moment of Clarity increases your energy regeneration by 100%, and increases your attack speed by 30% for 5 seconds.

[Rushed Judgment] - Your Judgements spells now have a 30% chance to activate Zealots Rush. Zealots Rush increases your energy regeneration and Seal damage by 100% for 5 seconds.Additionally your Judgement deals extra damage while below 50 energy. Requires a 2 handed weapon to be equipped.

[Shocking Rush] - Dealing damage with Frostbrand Weapon, Windfury Weapon or Flametongue Weapon now has a chance to grant you Elementally Charged. Elementally charged can be consumed at 3 stacks by using a Shaman Shock. And increases your energy regeneration by 100, and increases the damage of your Shaman Weapon Enhancements by 50% for 5 seconds.

[Storm of Swords] - Your Slam now has a 14 second cooldown, no rage cost and gains 100% increased damage. Your Whirlwind now reduces the cooldown of Slam by 0.5 seconds per target hit. The cooldown reduction is increased to 1 second while wielding a single 2 handed weapon.

[Dreadnaught] - Requires 1 Handed Weapons. Your Overpower and Slam causes a seismic wave, dealing physical damage to up to 6 targets in a 10 yard cone. The effect has a 4 second internal cooldown.

[Cleric’s Light] - Your Blinding Light is transformed into Cleric's Light which now also emits a heal in a 10 yard area healing up to 5 nearby allies, it however does not disorient enemies anymore. Also reduces the cooldown of your Light's Hammer by 3 seconds for any target healed. If you know rank 3 of Holy Guidance the capstone effect is applied to any target healed.

[Downpour] - If you know Riptide you also learn Downpour Downpour is ground-targeted and heals up to 5 allied targets within 12 yards.. Each target struck by Downpour gives you a stack of Torrential Riptide.Torrential Riptide makes your next Riptide directly heal for 20% more and has 4% additional chance to crit, stacks up to 5 times. In addition your cooldown of Downpour is reduced by 3 seconds per stack consumed when you cast Riptide.

[Raging Momentum] - Using an Enrage type ability, Death Wish, Hunger for Blood, Bloodrage, Recklessness, Berserkers Rage, Hunger for Blood or Beastial Wrath will reduce at random the cooldown of one of the other abilities by 3 seconds. Abilities can be chosen even if they're not on cd or learnt.

[Crusaders Judgement] - Using a Judgement spell now grants your next Holy or Nature healing spell 10% increased critical strike chance, and reduces the cast time by 25%. Requires Spirit Allocation.

[Spot Weakness] - Teaches you Spot Weakness if you know Kill Shot. Spot Weakness has a 0.5 sec gcd and can only be used when affected by the Spot Weakness debuff. Your melee hunter abilities have a 20%, and ranged hunter abilities have a 10% chance to proc Spot Weakness on your target.

[Aftershock] - Transforms your Shockwave into Tectonic Shockwave. Tectonic Shockwave no longer stuns targets, but has a reduced cooldown. Gain a stack of Tectonic Echo for each target struck by Tectonic Shockwave. Tectonic Echo causes your next Earth Shock to hit an additional, stacking up to 6 times.

New Talents for Tamed Dragons and Elementals

Tamed Pets are a great way to be unique amongst the Heroes of Azeroth! With hundreds of options between tamable Beasts, Demons, Undead, Dragons, and Elementals, there’s certainly a lot to choose from. However, the two newest additions to the party–Tamable Dragons and Elementals–lacked support to bring them up to the strength of other tamable pets. Two new talents arrive to lessen that gap, granting power to tamed Dragons and Elementals in unique ways.

Draconic Knowledge 3/3

Power of the Elements 5/5 

Experimental Woodcutting.

Welcome to the World of Woodcutting! As a budding lumberjack, your mission is clear-cut: venture into the verdant forests and unleash your inner timber titan. Armed with an axe, you'll embark on a tree-mendous adventure, chopping down mighty oaks, towering pines, and gnarled elders. Harness the power of nature's bountiful resource and convert it into precious lumber, the lifeblood of craftsmen and builders alike. With every swing of your trusty tool, you'll harvest a treasure trove of wood, unlocking the potential for glorious rewards. From crafting materials to architectural marvels, your endeavors will shape the landscape and carve your path to greatness. So, prepare to branch out, embrace the call of the wild, and let the forest be your arboreal playground. It's time to leaf your mark on this arboreal escapade!

• This is EXPERIMENTAL WOODCUTTING
  • It is NOT finished, and is mostly proof-of-concept exploratory
• A new Woodcutting skill is available
  • Every small and medium sized tree is Azeroth can now be CHOPPED
• In absence of a crafting profession to match, there will be Callboard Profession quests available to turn wood into epic loot.
  • Welcome to League 4: Lumber of Azeroth

Preorder and Vanity Sync

With the introduction of the Vanity Sync in Season 8’s bundles, the game plan moving forward is to have Leagues and Season's both have the vanity sync in the bundle.

League 4 will have the Vanity Sync in the smallest 15DP bundle (5 usd), since it is much shorter while also supporting this faster content generation cycle.

The league bundles have also been buffed up to include a lot more consumables for a smooth experience. Things like riding tomes, full bags, and more for the same old prices to make it more like a one-stop-shop removing the hassle to jump in and enjoy the League.

Then seasons will continue to have the vanity sync in the 100dp bundle rather than completely starting from 0 like the original seasons. 

Preorders for the League 4 Bundle are available here: https://ascension.gg/store/archimonde/convenience

Updates for Thrall and Area 52

League 4 will test: 

• New Group Finder

The new Group Finder mentioned above is live currently on Thrall, allowing Heroes an easier time finding groups for their preferred content such as specific Raid difficulties and Mythic+

• 15 New abilities will come with TBC

As the new abilities are tested in League 4, they will readily be rolled out onto both Area 52 and Thrall simultaneously.

Updates for Area 52

PvP Season 3 starts May 19th on Area 52! Leap into the Arena and compete for titles, mounts, and your first chance at Tier 6 content! The full article can be viewed right here, but here’s a recap:
https://ascension.gg/news/step-into-the-arena-season-3/403

• Arena Season 3 is the first release of Tier 6 content
  • Expect Prestigious Season 3 in a future release!
• Gear has been re-itemized and custom fit for the heroes that opt to seek out other duelists and gladiators in the arena.
• The top ranked 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 Hero in Season 3 and their partners will receive a title
• Anyone who achieves top 10 in any bracket and at least 2000 rating will receive the prestigious Vengeful Nether Drake
• The Arena Master Achievement is now enabled and 5v5 requirements have been moved to 3v3.

Next, Hyjal Summit is on the horizon! It’s the primary focus of raid development at this time, with an estimated release date of July. Get ready to face down Archimonde and dive into Tier 6. Keep an eye out for an upcoming article about Tier 6 and their set bonuses

• Hyjal summit is coming and is the primary focus of raid development with an estimated release in 

late July.

• Adjustments will come to Tier 5 set bonuses to improve balance.

Updates for Thrall

• Improved World Boss loot
  • World Bosses now all drop 15 Raider’s Commendations
  • Ascended World Boss gear is now available.

Buffed World Boss loot arrives to make slaying creatures like Azuregos and Kazzak a worthwhile endeavor.

• Scourge and Legion Invasions

After the release of League 4, Scourge and Legion Invasions will additionally come to Season 8, allowing Heroes on Thrall to tackle these deadly challenges on Draft.

• Chapter 3 is in Development

League 4 serves as the intermission between Classic and the Burning Crusade for Season 8. Chapter 3 is in development, and it won’t be long until you’re stepping through the Dark Portal on your Draft Hero. In addition, when Season 8 moves into TBC, it will come with all the new abilities released during League 4. Get excited to draft new skills as you step into Outland!

Updates for CoA

Conquest of Azeroth prepares for the level 60 phase of its Alpha! The final stage of CoA’s foundational rework for ability and talent acquisition is underway. This massive overhaul to the way talents function utilizes the system introduced in Dragonflight, and features both a Class and a Specialization tree. This allows more granular customization of each of CoA’s 21 classes without being overwhelming, giving you the opportunity to customize your class and stand out from the other Necromancers out there.

This overhaul solved a lot of the core pacing problems in the CoA design:

1. Too much text
   1. With as many passives as were innately given to the classes, this forced everyone to read huge paragraphs of text before they could understand the dynamics of the class.
2. Passive Acquisition
   1. These passives were given to you by default without your choice, this often meant getting passives you didn’t want, or maybe not even seeing you had them at all
3. More Choice
   1. With the addition and Ability and Talent essence spending, you now have many more total choices with less total options per choice, this makes the flow of the game a lot more manageable and gives you more autonomy
4. Class and Specialization Differentiation
   1. This system allows for meaningful choice on both the Specialization and the Class level ensuring your kit is tailored to how you want to play.

Currently, the new talent overhaul  is about 75% finished and once it is done it will be implemented onto Rexxar for testing. When the community is happy with the implementation, Rexxar will begin the 60 phase where focus will shift greatly towards class balance. 

If you are interested in being a part of the development process, you can opt-in to the Conquest of Azeroth Alpha with the CoA Travel Guide, which can be found on the in-game Auction House on Ascension’s Classless servers, or online at the Ascension Shop. Not only will you be helping develop CoA and the newest way to explore Azeroth, but you’ll also get in-game rewards, an invite to the Development Discord, and a chance to help shape the future of CoA. You can test out all the upcoming content, all 21 classes, and get a head start on your conquest of Azeroth!

• Area 52: https://ascension.gg/store/area-52/584/conquest-of-azeroth-alpha-bundle-21-custom-classes/ascension-bundles
• Thrall: https://ascension.gg/store/thrall/584/conquest-of-azeroth-alpha-bundle-21-custom-classes/ascension-bundles

Update for Grizzly Hills

Development for Classless Wrath of the Lich King is proceeding on track. Currently, the Wrath Alpha has hit some pretty big milestones, including:

• All Quest Zones scripted and working
  • Howling Fjord
  • Borean Tundra 
  • Dragonblight
  • Grizzly Hills 
  • Zul'drak
  • Sholazar Basin
  • Storm Peaks
  • Icecrown
• All WotLK Dungeons available in all difficulties
  • Normal
  • Heroic
  • Mythic
  • Mythic+ 1-255
• All Raids excluding Naxxramas are released for baseline Testing
  • The Eye of Eternity
  • Vault of Archavon
  • Obsidian Sanctum
  • Ulduar
  • Trial of the Crusader
  • Onyxia’s Lair
  • Icecrown Citadel
  • The Ruby Sanctum
• New WotLK Callboard Quests are available

Heroes interested in being a part of the development process can opt-in to the WotLK Alpha by grabbing the bundle either in-game or from the Ascension Shop. Not only will you be supporting development, but you’ll also get to test out upcoming content, explore Northrend, join the Alpha Discord, and get a head-start on theorycrafting your perfect Wrath Hero. You can find links to the Alpha below:

• Area 52: https://ascension.gg/store/area-52/514/ascension-wrath-of-the-lich-king-alpha-bundle/ascension-bundles
• Thrall: https://ascension.gg/store/thrall/514/ascension-wrath-of-the-lich-king-alpha-bundle/ascension-bundles

That’s the overview, Heroes. We hope you’re excited to leap into the next League and face the Trials of Azeroth!