Season 8: Chapter 4 Overview

Chapter 4 Overview

Heroes!

Your story continues! The next chapter of Season 8 is here, and with it the next page of your adventure: welcome to Chapter 4!

Unlike Chapters 2 and 3 which completely change the paradigm, Chapter 4 focuses on just making the game better. 

Chapter 4 releases on October 21st.

• 6 Brand new Worldforged Enchantments
  • That push the limits of how epic it can feel to acquire Worldforged RE’s
• Call Board: Outland World Quest Overhaul
• Uncapped Hand of Fate Quests
• Experience Changes
• Mythic+ Upgrades
• No-Risk Motherlodes
• New Trial: Feelin’ Fishy
• New Tamable Demon: Man’ari Eredar
• Raiders Commendation Updates
• Reputation Rings Update
• New Seasonal Collection
• Extended Tooltips
• Big Balance Changes
• Raids on Thrall
  • Tempest Keep
  • Zul’aman
  • Hyjal Summit
• Arena Season 2.5
  • Prestigious Arena Gear

New Worldforged Enchantments

New Worldforged Enchantments arrive with Chapter 4, bringing amazing new cross-class builds to discover and play.

• Legendary: Legacy of the Arcanist
  • Master the cycle of elemental meteors to unleash insane damage for a short time
• Legendary: Zandalari Windreaver
  • Become Draven from League of Legends
• Epic: Project: L.T.C
  • Supercharge your companion and unleash a powered-up pet!
• Epic: Tidewaters
  • Embrace natural healing and bless the rains to restore your ally’s vigor
• Epic: Ambush Predator
  • Ravage targets with feline grace, seen or unseen
• Epic: Ethereal Echostrike
  • A technique of the Ethereal tribes to riposte multiple targets at once

These enchantments are yours to discover in the Open World as soon as Chapter 4 goes live, and they’re not your average adventure: these enchantments push the limits of how cool it can be to discover and obtain Worldforged Enchantments. 

This will be the last batch of new Mystic Enchantments for some time as focus shifts to consolidating, refining, and polishing existing Epic and Legendary Enchantments.

Hero’s Call Board: Outland World Quest Overhaul

The Hero’s Call and Warchief’s Command boards are great ways to obtain Mystic Orbs, Mystic Runes, Marks of Ascension, and even gear from Callboard Caches. However, some of the quests on the board are outdated or unrefined.

Specifically, the Population Control and Keeping Evil at Bay quests could sometimes be scattered all throughout the Open World: lengthy and inconvenient to complete as you trudged across multiple zones and waited to kill monsters that had terrible respawn times. 

Season 8: Chapter 4 removes these quests and replaces them:

Every day, the Call Board now selects a single zone in Outland and posts six quests relevant to that zone. These quests will all appear in the same general location, so you can accept all six quests, head to the zone, fight to complete them, and return for big rewards. 

It also more effectively accomplishes the Call Board’s goal of incentivizing Heroes to flock to the same zone for epic gamer moments like meeting new allies or vicious PvP combat, depending on what game mode you’re playing.

There are 35 new areas that quests can appear in, 35 new Elites to conquer, and a pool of 210 new quests that will rotate by area every day. Additionally, this upgrade comes with increased Mark of Ascension rewards, which is great because:

Uncapped Hand of Fate Quests

Chapter 4 removes the Hand of Fate cap and transforms the Hand of Fate quest into a repeatable quest so that you can continue to power up your Draft Hero as much as you want! 

On Saturday, once the Hand of Fate quest reaches 400, it will become repeatable for all of Chapter 4. This means you can continue to power up at level cap if you still have abilities you need.

Experience Changes

With Chapter 4 brings experience changes to Battlegrounds and Dungeons

• Battleground Kill experience increased by 20%
• Dungeon Mob kill experience increased by 10% 

Mythic+ Upgrades

Season 8: Chapter 4 introduces two key Mythic+ changes:

1. The Cap on Mythic+ Coins increases significantly 
   1. You’ll be able to upgrade your Mythic 0 Items to higher levels with Coins
2. Going beyond the current Mythic+ gear cap now rewards you with additional rewards to incentivize you going even further beyond!

No-Risk Motherlodes

Motherlodes were previously High Risk exclusive Herb and Ore nodes that were big and large. To increase both bigness and largeness throughout all areas of Ascension, Motherlodes are now also available in No-Risk!

Motherlodes require 3 people to harvest them, and offer BIG loot for Heroes who find and claim them. Band together with allies or complete strangers to demolish the herbs and ore, and revel in the spoils within. The loot that Motherlodes drop is also improved, so it’s worth adventuring out to get them!

New Trial: Feelin’ Fishy

Achieve your dream of becoming a fish man and touching water or dying with this brand new Hardcore One-Life Trial!

Feelin’ Fishy is a new trial that exchanges your lungs for gills. This means from the moment you accept it at level 1 to the second you hit level cap, you’ll be dying of dehydration. You’ll have a breath meter, and need to retreat back to the water to replenish it. Can you level to 60 remembering to touch water or die? Now you can try!

Note for Heroes in Outland: did you know that lava is also technically water now? It’s true! Look forward to breathing all the ‘water’ located in the steaming pits of volcanic ash in Shadowmoon Valley! 

New Tamable Demon: Man’ari Eredar

A new Tamable Demon Pet has been unlocked for Heroes traversing the shattered world of Outland: Man’ari Eredar can now be tamed by the Enslave Demon skill! There are 4 new types of Man’ari Eredar to control, each with different spell combinations.

Raider’s Commendations Updates

Raider’s Commendations are a currency you can trade for gear from past raids you’ve completed. Each Raider’s Commendation you earn from every Boss you slay is progress: no matter what raid you run, you’ll acquire Raider’s Commendations that you can use to grab the gear you want. Chapter 4 improves Raider’s Commendations with a new update:

Raider’s Commendations are no longer restricted to the previous tier of content. You can now trade Raider’s Commendations on gear up to the current tier you have completed, with the exception of the last boss of each raid.

• This opens your ability to obtain current gear to progress the current raid to the final boss while keeping final boss loot a worthy prize for progressing content.
• Since the last raid boss items still unlock in the next tier, the best most iconic items are still highly prized, and it will always be worth pushing the latest raid forward
• Balances out Callboard Caches and Raider’s Commendations
  • Callboard Caches give more of the previous tier, while Raider’s Commendations are now more competitive giving current tier.

Reputation Rings: Karazhan and Hyjal

Karazhan and Hyjal award some of the strongest rings in TBC as reputation rewards: but in the past, you could only have one in your inventory at any time. This was bad for Heroes who had multiple specs and wanted rings for each one. A new Chapter 4 upgrade fixes this!

Now, you can have multiple reputation rings in your inventory, so you can carry as many as you need for your various specs. You can still only equip one at a time, but it’s a big quality of life change if you have multiple specs.

New Seasonal Collection

The next track for the Seasonal Collection releases with Chapter 4. Within the week of the chapter launching, you’ll be able to earn Seasonal Points by doing activities you love, unlocking cool new cosmetics as you adventure through Outland.

Extended Tooltips

Extended Tooltips are longer, more informative tooltips that you can see when hovering over certain Legendary Mystic Enchantments.

As Legendary Mystic Enchantments have grown in both tooltip length and complexity, the weaknesses and limitations of the current system are being exposed. Legendary Enchants are being stretched to their limits. They enable amazing cross-class combinations, but not the classless freedom to let you play the way you want. There are big plans in the works for a foundational shift in Legendary Enchantments to resolve the problems they currently create.

For now, many mystic enchantments have blue text at the bottom where you can press shift to view additional information. This both prevents the tooltip itself from becoming an encyclopedia when you mouse over it, while still providing lots of relevant information.

However, many Heroes are not aware of these extended tooltips, which can be essential to understanding an Enchantment. Thus, it’s being announced here so that more people are aware of this essential tool.

Balance Changes

The following balance changes arrive on both realms with the release of Chapter 4

Primary Allocation Tweaks

Strength and Agility have always been similar stats, particularly with melee-focused builds. In an effort to distinguish them through itemization, the allocation bonuses benefitted Agility much more than Strength.

Though more effort will be necessary to get Strength and Agility in a good place, the following Primary Stat changes are the first step in making each feel distinct. 

• Primary Stat: Strength

Heavy Swings, the Strength 2H Bonus, no longer reduces your melee and ranged attack speed. Now, you just gain the 10% damage boost.

Many heroes want to wield a big, sweaty 2h weapon. But the tradeoff of 10% decreased attack speed for such a foundational part of your character felt bad. Chapter 4 removes the tradeoff.

• Primary Stat: Agility

Agile Strikes, the Agility 1H bonus, receives adjustment to its 1h effect. It now reduces the global cooldown and cost of your skills by 8%.

Dagger Specialization Overperformance

Poison-based Dagger builds have risen to the top of the meta in Mythic and Ascended raids, the highest tiers of difficulty. To bring these specs more in line with other interesting top-tier builds and prevent one-spec from becoming mandatory in upper levels of play, the base scaling of dagger specs has been reduced, some specs that were heavily affected have been rebalanced, and some power has been reintroduced to the Legendary Enchantments themselves.

• Envenom now increases the chance to apply Deadly Poison by 5% and Instant Poison by 10%. Down from 10/20% respectively.
• Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Deadly Poison by 6/12/18/24/30%. Up from 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Improved Poisons now increases the chance to apply Instant Poison by 6/12/18/24/30%. Down from 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Increased the base damage and scaling of Envenom by 25%.
• Decreased the base damage and scaling of Gloomblade by 30%.
• Filthy Tricks talent now increases the damage of your Gloomblade by 10/20/30%.
• [Serpent Venom] Increased base damage of Serpent Strike by 25%.
• [Serpent Venom] Added stat scaling to Serpent Strike. Now it scales by 10% of your Spell Power and Attack Power.
• [Serpent Venom] Serpent Strike target debuff now increases damage taken from your Deadly Poison by 5% and Instant Poison by 3% per stack. Up from 2/1% respectively.
• [Festering Wound] Festering Wound has been slightly reworked now it reads:
  • Your Envenom hits increase the damage the target takes from your Nature Spells and Abilities by 2% for 12 seconds. This effect stacks 8 times. 
  • Mutilate critical strikes instantly restore 5 energy and another 10 energy over 3 seconds. 

More Power to Harder to Execute Specializations

As custom mechanics and bosses come to Ascension, many high-end fights have become mechanically difficult. This caused many iconic specializations to fall to the wayside in favor of builds that could keep up with the rigors of Mythic and Ascended Raiding. 

Ascension is about playing the way you want, and many Heroes want to play these builds. More power is coming to the following specs so that playing them feels awesome:

• [Harbinger of Pestilence] Harbinger of Pestilence now increases the damage of Harbinger’s Bile by 70% per stack. Up from 50%.
• [Harbinger of Pestilence] Increased base damage and scaling of Insect Swarm (Plague) by 20%.
• [Wrath of the Plague] Wrath of the Plague damage over time can now critically strike.
• [Consumed By Fire] Decimation also increases your fire damage by 8/15% while this Mystic Enchant is equipped.
• [Burning Darkness] While under the effect of Pyroclasm, your Unstable Affliction deals 20% increased damage. 
• [Blood for the Blood God] Fixed a scaling bug with Favor of the Soulflayer, its damage at level 70 gets increased by 20% as a result of this change.
  • Fixed an issue with Exsanguinate that would increase the critical strike damage gained from Favor of the Soulflayer, to make sure it doesn’t lower the performance of the spec the bleed damage increase from Bathe in Blood is now to 5% from 2% per stack, and the damage increase for Dispatch and Eviscerate is now 5% from 2%.

Mental Dexterity

To support its place as a cornerstone of Hybrid Builds Mental Dexterity has been changed to the following:

• Mental Dexterity now grants 5/10/15% of your Intellect as Hit rating. Changed from Haste Rating as this conversion did not work correctly.

Feral Overhaul

Cat Form specializations are difficult to balance, because their base scaling is exceptional. This means that their talents, abilities, and enchantments are weaker to compensate, which made cat form feel bad to invest in. By lowering the base scaling while buffing everything else, Cat Form will feel better to invest in.

Additionally, the base cooldowns of many Feral abilities are getting buffed, increasing their benefits and making them as strong as similar abilities while maintaining a feral-specific identity.

• Cat Form now only increases your attack power by 25% of your Agility.
• Tiger’s Fury now also increases your damage done by 5%.
• Berserk now lasts 10 seconds and has an additional mechanic: Your Cat combo point generators grant 4 additional combo points (1 vs players) for the duration of Berserk.
• Infected Wounds also increases the damage of all cat & bear bleeds by 3/6/9%.
• Improved Mangle also increases the damage of your Mangle by 7/14/20%.
• Savage Fury is now a 3 point talent (up form 2). Now it correctly increases the damage of said abilities by 4/8/12%.
• Ferocity now reduces the energy cost of mentioned ability by 2 energy per point.
• King of the Jungle talent now has additional mechanic: While in Cat Form, Tiger's Fury restores 20/40/60 energy and you deal  2/4/6% increased damage while above 75% health.
• Increased damage of Shred by 13%
• Shredded Attacks now reduces energy cost of mentioned abilities by 5/10/15. Up from 3/6/10. The Capstone will now also be applied from Ravage hits.
• Rend and Tear talent now increases your critical strike chance with Ferocious Bite by 10/20/30%. Up from 7/14/20%. Now it requires your target to be affected by your Rip or Lacerate in order to grant the benefit. 
• [Feral Instinct] Now also increases the damage dealt by Ravage by 10/20/30%. And the Capstone is now activated when dealing damage with Ravage.
• [Rend and Tear ] Rare Mystic Enchant increases damage of Shred and Maul by 4% and critical strike chance of Ferocious Bite by 2%. Now it requires your target to be affected by your Rip or Lacerate in order to grant the benefit. 
• [Blood Sport] Your Mangle (Cat) now deals 10% increased damage against targets afflicted by your Lacerate.
• [Unbearable Shred] Increases the damage of your Shred by 8%  against targets afflicted by your Lacerate. Additionally increases the duration of your Lacerate by 1 second.

MORE BUFFS

The following buffs improve several popular specs. The priority from here is improving existing Epic and Legendary enchantments, rather than creating new ones for the immediate future. More buffs are currently in testing, and planned for the future.

• [Razor Claws] Bloody Claws (Passive) now increases the damage of your Rip and Rake by 45%. Up from 30%.
• [Razor Claws] In addition to Claw and Bloodthirst, Shred and Ravage now also extend the duration of Rip by 1 second.

• Increased the base damage and scaling of Starfall by 20%.
• [Knight of the Eclipse] Increased the base damage and scaling of Knightfall by 20%.
• [Knight of the Eclipse] Fixed a bug where the damage of Knightfall would not scale above level 60.

• [Heavyweight] Increased weapon damage of Crush to 200%. Up from 150%.

• [Fingers of Stone] Fingers of Stone buff now increases the damage of your Stone Shard by 15%. Changed from 25% increased critical strike damage.

• [Piercing Cleaver] Piercing Cleaver now scales of modifiers to Cleave.

• [White Walker] Increased Winds of Winter attack and spell power scaling by 25%.
• [White Walker] Howl of Winter now increases the damage of Deep Freeze by 66% per stack.
• [White Walker] Slice and Ice now converts 50% of your intellect into melee critical strike rating, but no longer increases melee attack speed.
• [White Walker] Frozen Blade is now granted by Winds of Winter, has 5 charges and increases Sinister and Eviscerate damage by 125% vs monsters.

• [Twilight Paragon] Casting Smite while affected by both Paragon of Darkness and Surge of Light will now deal additional Twilight damage.
  • Increased the damage of Twilight Treason by 10%.

• [Unrelenting Wrath] Now increases the effectiveness of all aspects of Kill Command by 100%.
  [Unrelenting Wrath] The Beast Within no longer makes the player immune to crowd-control effects if activated with Unrelenting Wrath.

• [Son of Gruul] The rage cost of Hateful Strike has been reduced to 30 from 40.
• [Son of Gruul] Upheaval and Ground Slam now generates 2 charges of Hate when used against players.
  [Son of Gruul] Shatter now generates 2 charges of Hate.
  
   
• [Wild Felfire] The attack and spell power scaling of the area-of-effect proc of Wild Felfire has been increased by 40%.

• [Hoplite] Titan's Grip damage reduction has been changed from -10% to 0%.
• [Hoplite] Shield Strike damage increased by 30%.
  
   
• [Holy Ascension] Now increases the damage dealt by Seals by 30%.
  
   
• [Gurubashi Berserker] Casting Colossus Smash now makes your next 3 Executes usable regardless of the target's health state and increases the damage of Execute by 30%(15% vs players).

• Reduced base damage of Garrote by 30%. Increased its scaling by 30%.
• Reduced the base damage of Rupture by 20%. Increase its scaling by 35%.
  • Bleeds will be weaker at early levels, but scale stronger into late game especially as you gear up
    
     
• [Starweaver] A new talent has been added to the Balance tree, it increases Starsurge and Starfall damage by 7/14/20%. Capstone Bonus: Starsurge casts reduce the cooldown of Starfall by 3 seconds.

• [Blood Venom] Toxic Strikes now grants Mortal Strike 12% more damage per stack, up from 10%.
• [Blood Venom] Blood Venom can now critically strike.
• [Blood Venom] Blood Venom’s duration increased to 15 seconds.
• [Blood Venom] Blood Venom can now stack 3 times.

• [Deadly Bite] Deadly Bite now increases the damage dealt by Raptor Strike by 15% per stack, up from 12%.
• [Deadly Bite] Increased the base damage and scaling of Deadly Bite bleed by 10%.
• [Deadly Bite] Savage Blade now grants 30% increased damage on your next Counterattack or Mongoose Bite, up from 20%.
  
   
• [Single-Minded Fury] The 10% damage reduction on Mortal Strike, Overpower, and Slam effects has been reduced to 5%
  • 5% damage buff

• [Ice Lash] Increased the weapon damage of Ice Lash to 200% from 160%.
• [Ice Lash] Solid Ice now increases the damage dealt by Ice Lance and Cone of Cold by 25% per stack.
• [Ice Lash] Solid Ice now increases the damage dealt by Frost Bolt and Deep Freeze by 15% per stack.

General Changes

• Rest Spell
  • Buffed

The Rest spell in the general tab has been with Ascension since the very beginning, offering a way to recover Health and Mana without food or water. But have you ever used it? Did you even know it existed? Lets buff it:

• You now recover increasing health and mana the longer you Rest.

Rest now has exponential scaling the longer you use it, giving it a unique niche relative to food and water. This new Rest is useful when you’re playing casually in Battlegrounds or a Dungeon and don’t have food or water with you. Rest well, Heroes!

• Heals gain a small Attack Power Coefficient
  • Buffed

Heroes on Ascension have a lot more health than classic heroes, and this disparity increases as progression goes on. The more health you get, the less effective Heals become.

In order to help heals keep up with you as you play, all heals now receive a small AP Coefficient. This change helps heals stay relevant, and reinforces classless.

• Big Bandage Buff
  • Buffed

Similar to healing, Bandages are less effective as Heroes progress and accumulate more health. To make Bandages relevant, they’re receiving a big buff to help them keep up with current health pools.

However, we understand that many heroes prefer to read paragraphs rife with alliteration. Please see the following paragraph restating the above change in terms you may find preferable:

Heroes! Bouncing back from being battered in battle? Bandages have been a bit behind, but brace yourself! To boost these binding buddies and make them the best bet for bulging health bars, we're bestowing a brilliant and bountiful buff on Bandages. Be ready to benefit big time!

PvP: Casting JUKES!

• PvP Patch
  1. Fake cast talent changes.These talents now have a new effect to encourage fake casting
     1. Burning Determination:
     2. Celestial Focus
     3. Spiritual Focus
     4. Frozen Core 
  2. Being hit by an interrupt effect while not casting makes you immune to the next Crowd Control, Knockback, Silence or Interrupt effect

With the amount of tools on Ascension to interrupt spell casts, faking your spell casts can be essential for casters to dodge skills like Kick and Wind Shear. Additionally, using interrupts against casters should feel tide-turning and epic, rather than just a button you press on cooldown. To further promote this style of gameplay and introduce more points of interaction between players, the talents that support Fake Casting receive buffs to encourage this style of gameplay!

Each of these Talents now receive this additional capstone effect:

• Celestial Focus
• Spiritual Focus
• Frozen Core

• “Being hit by an interrupt effect while not casting makes you immune to Crowd Control, Knockback, Silence, or Interrupt effects for 5 seconds.”

Additionally, Burning Determination has been reworked to keep pace with these other strong talents. It’s new capstone effect reads:

• “Being hit by an interrupt effect while not casting makes you immune to the next Crowd Control, Knockback, Silence or Interrupt effect against you and gives you 20% spell haste for 5 seconds. This may only occur once every 20 seconds.”

The goal of these changes is to make the interplay between casting and interrupts a more dynamic and essential part of PvP: use mind games to win and prove your big brain.

Raids and Arenas

PvE

Season 4 brings several big updates to Heroes who love PvE. In addition to the recently released Serpentshrine Cavern and updated Tier Set Bonuses, you can look forward to several catchup mechanics that speed you into the action and current tier!

• SSC has been Released!
  • Came with Updated Tier Set bonuses
• Updated Call Board Caches
  • Caches can now contain Tier 4 gear
• Previous Raid Tiers now drop Personal Loot!
• New and powerful Crafting Items available
• Raiders Commendations are now available to all 4 previous Raid Tiers
• G'eras has new items available for Badges of Justice!

In addition, three Raids are on the way:

• Tempest Keep
• Zul’Aman
• Hyjal Summit

Now is the time to complete your Tier 4 set in preparation for Tempest Keep fitted with custom mechanics, which releases on Thrall on October 28th!

Additionally, the next two raid releases are available on the Timeline:

https://ascension.gg/timeline

This is the first time Hyjal Summit has ever been featured on a Seasonal Realm, as well as the first time you can challenge it as a Draft Hero. 

New Hyjal Summit Boss: Chromius

Look forward to remastered fights and including an epic fully-scripted, fully-custom, fully-voiced-acted fight against the twisted Bronze Dragon Chromius. Protect Azeroth’s greatest heroes in a fight against time itself.

Clocks ticking

Fight alongside Grom Hellscream to destroy Mannoroth 

Return to iconic moments in the past and future, and even dive into alternate timelines in this completely custom fight. Will you make it in time?

PvP

Step into the Arena and engage in bloodthirsty 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 content! Arena Season 2.5 arrives on Thrall with Chapter 4!

Season 2.5 introduces new Prestigious Arena Gear, giving Heroes across Outland the chance to earn awesome rewards. Additionally, the new season introduces an Increased Arena Point Cap.

MMR, Rating, and Arena Points are NOT RESET for the 2.5 Season!

In addition, with the upgraded PvE changes, both Crow’s Cache and the Treasure Hunter Buff (High Risk PvP) have been upgraded to include all previous tiers. Searching for your set of Heroic Bloodforged Tier 4? Now is your chance to obtain it!

See you in Outland, Heroes. The next chapter of your journey awaits!