Season 9 Full Overview Article

Season 9 Full Overview Article

Welcome to the dawn of your destiny.

Season 9 is Ascension's most transformative season ever, and you can experience it on December 15th. Set off for adventure and discover over a thousand completely brand new spells and talents unlocked from Shattered Mystic Enchantments in the rDe-imagined Wildcard Mode. Wield your new unmatched power to enter the all new Manastorm, a completely new form of PvE, embark into Adventure Mode and face a reinvigorated open world. Test it against Raid Trials, new World Bosses, and in new custom Arenas. And so, so much more.

Season 9 Overview

Join us for the dawn of a new era: the return of the core of Classless WoW. Start with hundreds of thousands of other players on a fresh seasonal realm, progressing through expansions, and experiencing the entire adventure together from start to finish: learning the ins-and-outs of a whole new classless system along the way. 

Unlock the power of Mystic Enchantments shattered into over 1500 new abilities and talents.

Discover, experiment, and combine them in the re-imagined Wildcard mode: where you roll both abilities and talents with no limits and unlock legendary power.

Mix, match, and experiment with EVERYTHING in a season whereas many restrictions as possible have been removed.

With new unlocked power, you'll enter the Manastorm: an endless Wildcard Dungeon that grows in strength the deeper you delve. 

Set off into Adventure Mode, a quest focused adventure where you control the difficulty of the Open World to have as dangerous an adventure as you want.

Challenge new World Bosses, face deadly Raid Trials, compete in New Arenas, earn epic PvP gear in Battlegrounds, decimate invasions, and so much more: all while improving your Wildcard Hero and growing stronger with every step of your journey.

Season 9 was built towards a single idea: bringing Classless WoW back to its core: discovering and experimenting to build your Classless Hero through focused systems with endless depth and infinite possibilities.

This is the best opportunity in Ascension’s history to start playing Classless WoW. Embark on a brand new adventure with hundreds of thousands of other players at a fresh starting line where everything is open to you with no limits.

Here is everything planned for Season 9:

• A Return to CLASSLESS
• Shattered Mystic Enchantments
  • 1500+ new Abilities and Talents
• Removing Restrictions
• Unlocking Classless in Season 9
• Wildcard Mode
• Scrolls of Fortune
  • Reroll unwanted abilities and talents
• Skill Cards
  • Shape your Destiny
• Silas Darkmoon
• Making the Game Better
• Manastorm
  • Endless Wildcard Dungeon
• Prestige Updates
• LFG Dungeon Scaling
• Zone Scaling
• Adventure Mode
  • New Quest Focused Adventure in a dangerous Open World
• Massive Vanilla Itemization Overhaul
• New World Bosses
• Mythic+ Updates
• Potion Changes
• Raid Trials
• New Trials
• Call Board Quest Overhaul
• Invasions
• Cross Faction Guilds
• Black Temple
• New Character Advancement UI
• Build Creator Updates on A52
• Timeline Changes + Faster Start
• Improvements to Malik the Courier
• Season 9 Chapters
• Best PvP Gear from Battlegrounds
• Diminishing Returns Update
• New Arena Maps
• High Risk Updates
• Split Patches

A Return to CLASSLESS: Looking at EVERYTHING

A core focus of Season 9 is a return to classless WoW, and that means going back and re-investigating heavy handed solutions to old problems. It’s a chance to question assumptions, look at past changes, and create more nuanced solutions:

Tens of thousands of changes have been made to Ascension since its release 7 years ago. Since then, the game has grown exponentially and there are a lot of new solutions to old problems. In Season 9, Ascension is going back and assessing the changes made since 2017: every change, every design decision, and every tweak to see if it is necessary. 

Everything is being looked at: every tooltip, every interaction between spells, every change ever made. Every assumption is being questioned and new solutions are being implemented with the goal of returning to classless: creating your own build and playing the way you want. 

A lot of changes in this vein have been made and more will be made throughout the course of the season.

Here’s a couple examples:

• Stealth no longer has a duration. It’s now back to its original permanent effect
  • In High Risk PvP, where this was a problem, a new Elixir is available
    • Elixir of Greater Stealth Detection: Drastically increases your stealth detection

This solves the problem of stealth where the problem actually is, in High-Risk, rather than just nerfing Stealth in general. Pinpointed changes to solve specific problems is the goal of Season 9.

• Windfury now works with iconic spells like Killing Spree and Bladestorm
  • This combination was originally too strong in PvP, so it was completely turned off. Windfury could not proc during Killing Spree or Bladestorm
  • This nerfed Windfury not just in PvP, but across all dimensions, which is too heavy-handed
    • New Change: Windfury deals less damage in PvP if it procs while in Killing Spree or Bladestorm

This again repairs a heavy-handed nerf to Windfury to instead make a specific, pinpointed change, that can be tweaked as needed. Bladestorm and Killing Spree used to never proc Windfury. But that’s not fun: you like proc’ing Windfury while Bladestorming: that’s classless.

Ascension now has the tools to revert changes like this and replace them with pinpointed solutions for specific circumstances, rather than sweeping general changes.

This moves closer to ensuring that the intuitive combinations that you think ought to be really good ARE really good: Heroes come to Ascension with an idea of what they THINK is going to be good in a classless setting: Titans Grip + Windfury, Shadowform DoT Warlocks, Judgements on Warrior Abilities, etc. 

Over time, nerfing all the obvious stuff that people come to Ascension to play pushed the best builds into ambiguity and stopped your game knowledge from being relevant. What you thought would be good wasn't, and that made the game harder to learn and less fun to play.

In Season 9, things you THINK should be good are GOING to be good. That’s the whole point of using your knowledge to perform well in CLASSLESS.

Season 9 focuses in on what makes Ascension great:

Removing Restrictions

Returning to Classless means opening up restrictions on thousands of abilities, talents, and other areas of the game so that you get to decide how they’re used. There are dozens of ways that Ascension is removing restrictions. These changes are aimed at opening up restrictions and returning to a true Classless paradigm where you get to mix and match stuff to make your own unique Hero, which is the core of Ascension.

The first way is by shattering Mystic Enchantments into 1500+ new Abilities and Talents.

Shattered Mystic Enchantments

Mystic Enchantments have been an essential part of Ascension for years. They’re the foundation upon which you’ve been able to imagine, explore, and master dozens of different cross-class archetypes and class fantasies.

Over time, as Ascension added more and more enchantments to the game, the breadth of what they can do has expanded: enchantments became BIGGER and progressively ended up prioritizing cross-class LRE archetypes over classless. Even though they created new cross-class builds, Legendary Enchantments still required you to pick all the spells the enchant needed to make it work. This limited your ability to truly play the way you want.

Eventually, the depth of cross-class interactions outgrew the format of Legendary Mystic Enchantments. They weren’t even necessarily complicated, they just didn’t fit in a tooltip. The most recent Legendary Mystic Enchantments were literally bursting at the seams.

So they’re exploding.

Season 9 shatters Epic and Legendary enchantments into 1500+ unique, individual Spells and Talents that you can mix and match any way you want in the Re-imagined Wildcard mode.

This is going to make Season 9 absolutely wild.

• Season 9 shatters Epic and Legendary mystic enchantments into their core components
  • 1500+ unique, individual Spells and Talents that you can mix and match any way you want.
• Combine different parts of different Epic and Legendary Enchantments
  • To become a truly unique, original Hero
• Mix and match any combination of Enchantments you discover
• Become a more powerful hero than ever in Ascension’s history.

In Season 9, you have the potential to become stronger than you’ve EVER been before. The entire world of Ascension is open to you: mix and match the skills and talents you want, discover wild combinations as you go, and forge something no one else has ever had.

Removing Restrictions on Shattered Skills

Shattering Epic and Legendary enchantments alone isn’t all: in Season 9 hundreds of spells and talents have ALSO had their restrictions REMOVED. 

Individual skills and talents are being opened up to create as many builds as possible. Getting a spell like Lycan Claws should feel awesome on its own–you shouldn’t need Worgen Form, the final rank of Nightfall, Rip, Rake, Arugal’s Gift, and Mind Blast just to use it.

Old restrictive tooltip:

New very classless tooltip:

Old Enchant vs. New Talent:

• As many Abilities and Talents as possible have been opened up to be usable in the most classless way possible 
• Usable on their own without prerequisites where possible
• Mix and match them in Wildcard Mode to create a truly classless Hero

Additionally, the Skills and Talents that DID have prerequisites now offer additional benefits when you have all the parts, rather than requiring them outright just to use. This means you will more often than not be able to use whatever wild spells you roll. 

New Classless Lightning Blade:

Lightning Blade no longer requires Storm Charges in Season 9

Overloaded Blade used to be a requirement to use Lightning Blade. Now it just makes it better when you have both!

Now, you’re not gated from using cool abilities just because you don’t have two or three specific enchantments. This opens up TONS of possibilities with builds you can roll, and makes sure you can use as many combinations of skills as possible with as many synergies as possible. Play how you want, and enjoy crazy cool new abilities.

Here’s sneak peek at a few of the spells and talents that have been opened up to fit into your new classless builds:

• Agile Coordination:
  • 
  • Now works with all finishers and all pets, instead of rogue finishers and beast pets.

• Faerie Blink:
  • 
  • No longer prevents Blink or Unchained Blink from being cast! You can learn all 3!

• Arugal’s Blink:
  • 
  • Now works with all other Blink talents! Want to be a Blink bomb? Combine Arugal’s Blink, Explosive Entrance, Time Distortion, Unchained, and War Mage. Cast them all with Faerie Blink to unleash absolute chaos every time you Blink.

• Raising Hell:
  • 
  • Removed all “Does not work with Boomer, Iron Sand and Hoarfrost.”

• Shadow Charge:
  • 
  • Now stacks with all other elemental Charges.

• Lightning Blade and Thunder Slam:
  • 
  • 
  • No longer dependent on Storm Blade. These spells can be cast on a charge system immediately when rolled with no requirements, but can be used more often with Overloaded Blade.

• Forked Lightning:
  • 
  • Now works with Lightning Strikes Twice.

• Lightning Strikes Twice:
  • 
  • Now works with Forked Lightning.

• Frostfall:
  • 
  • Now works with Shadowfall, Starfall, Knightfall and Firefall.
  • None of these share a cooldown. If you roll it, you can cast it.

• Knight of the Eclipse:
  • 
  • Works with any Sinister Strike ability.
    • Sinister Strike can grant you Knight of the Eclipse.
    • Pistol Shot can grant you Knight of the Eclipse.
    • Thrust can grant you Knight of the Eclipse.

• White Walker’s Frozen Blade:
  • 
  • Eviscerate grants you Fingers of Frost, even without the talent! Roll Frozen Blade, use Frozen Blade.

• Mindblast!:
  • 
  • Used to require Brain Freeze Rank 3 and Fingers of Frost Rank 2.
  • This is now a standalone talent with no requirement! Cast Frost spells, Get Mindblast!.

• Frenzied Swipe:
  • 
  • No longer limited to Cat Form or Beast pets.
  • Now works with Cat Swipe and any tamed pet!

• Bloodletting:
  • 
  • Used to spread your ‘Rend’ and only Rend. But now it spreads them all!
    • Spreads Hell Scream.
    • Spreads Carnage Rend.
    • Spreads Hydra’s Venom.
    • Spreads Elemental Rend Fire, Frost and Nature.
    • Bloodletting will spread all of your Rend spells. All 7 if you roll it!

• Spell Shredder:
  • 
  • Removed “Does not work with In For the Kill.” Noticing a pattern here?
  • Massively simplified to ensure it fits into your Classless Wildcard build without a long list of requirements and hoops to jump through.
  • Now, Casting Frostbolt empowers your next Rend to apply Elemental Rend Frost. It’s that easy.

• Felstrike, Unleashed Fel Energy, Fel Meteor:
  • 
  • Now usable while Shapeshifted.
  • Now immediately castable on a charge system. No requirements to use!

• Goldrinn’s Focus:
  • 
  • Now works with any finisher move.

• Rooted Assassin:
  • 
  • Now works with any finisher move.

• Swashbuckler: Bloodsail:
  • 
  • Now works with any finisher move.

• Ready for Mayhem:
  • 
  • Now works with any finisher move.

No More Transformation Spells

Alongside removing restrictions, so you can use as many new abilities and talents as possible, skills that used to transform one spell into another spell (Frost Nova → Absolute Zero, Mage Armor → Nimble Mind) don’t anymore. 

• There are no transformation spells. You roll them as their own unique abilities.
• They don’t share a cooldown with the spells they share modifiers with.
• They don’t lock other spells from being used.

This means you can have both Penance and Icy Penance, Fear and Mass Hysteria, etc. The goal here is to unlock as many things as possible for you to play whatever way you want.

Ice Age and Absolute Zero used to transform Frost Nova. Now you can use all 3 if you get them.

Many ‘Tradeoff’ Enchantments are now just New Abilities and Talents

Previously, many Mystic Enchantments completely altered an ability or talent: for example, Controlled Storm traded Thunderstorm’s knockback for additional benefits, and Unstable Void made your Backdraft do something different.

These abilities and talents are now NEW, independent skills and talents that you can roll in Wildcard Mode.

Removed Unnecessary Tradeoffs from many Skills and Talents

Many skills and talents had tradeoffs that were not necessary in Season 9. Rather than being turned into new abilities and talents, these tradeoffs have been removed.

Old Enchantment vs. New Talent

The new Soul Siphoner talent gets rid of the 50% healing reduction and just gives you the benefit

Random Talent Requirements Removed from Abilities

In conjunction with the above changes, spells and abilities unlocked from Shattered Enchantments no longer have random talent requirements.

Old Enchant vs. New Talent

Removed all complex and frustrating “does not work with” clauses from Shattered Abilities and Talents

Many Mystic Enchantment spells and abilities had clauses dictating that they ‘don’t work with’ or ‘only work with’ certain things. These didn’t promote playing the way you wanted, and many were not really even needed, so they’ve been removed. You’re now free to use Lightning Strikes Twice and Forked Lightning to obliterate enemies. If these need balance tweaks in the future, this will be done with the goal of not just making it so two abilities can’t be used together..

Old Enchantments:

New Talents:

New Unreleased Enchantments RELEASED!

Many unreleased Mystic Enchantments (like the ones teased in the League of Legends TikToks) have been shattered and added to the pool of abilities and talents you can find in Season 9. Brand of the Pyromaniac and Mordekaiser pull, anyone?

Mystic Enchantment Slots in Season 9 are for Greens and Blues

With all Epic and Legendary Mystic Enchantments shattered into new Abilities and Talents, your Epic and Legendary Mystic Enchantments have transformed into more Rare and Uncommon slots. You will still have 17 total Enchantments to slot!

Unlocked more abilities to be used in Shapeshift Forms

Dozens of new abilities can now be used while Shapeshifted. There are now 90+ total abilities usable while Shapeshifted. This opens up more options for how to build and play Shapeshift specs like Bear and Cat without being restricted to solely those form’s abilities.

Removed Soulshard Restrictions

Soul Shards are no longer required in Wildcard Mode:

• Soulshard requirements have been removed from everything
  • Create Healthstone
  • Create Soulstone
  • Summon Voidwalker
  • Summon Succubus
  • Summon Felhound
  • Summon Felguard
  • Create Firestone
  • Create Spellstone
  • …etc.

Miscellaneous Unlocked Restrictions

• Misdirect - Now affects more than just Hunter Spells!
• Auto Shot - You can now Auto Shot without ammunition! Equipping ammunition now increases the damage of Auto Shot

Unlocking Classless in Season 9

With all of the above changes– the removal of restrictions, shattering Mystic Enchantments into new skills, and putting true freedom to mix-and-match skills in your hands–the stage is set for the best Ascension season yet: you get to explore all of these changes in Wildcard Mode.

Wildcard Mode

Wildcard is a game mode where every ability and talent you get is completely random. It’s a discovery-focused adventure where you’ll steer and shape your Hero by keeping the powerful abilities and talents you want and rerolling the weakest ones you don’t. 

This is in direct contrast to Draft where as you get a better build, it becomes harder and harder to find abilities you’re willing to unlearn. In wildcard, you’re ALWAYS moving forward, with each roll sharpening your build and honing it to create YOUR classless hero.

As you roll and re-roll skills and talents, you’ll find amazing skills that bring your whole build together. In Wildcard Mode, legendary power is always right around the corner.

How to Play

This season, everyone has access to an improved level 1 reroll system. There is no Dealer’s Draft Deck or Weighted Dice. You’ll start the game with 4 abilities and use the new locking system to lock in the ones you want and reroll the ones you don't until you have a good starting set of skills. 

This makes rolling your starting abilities faster and more convenient than ever before. Find your favorites, and start your adventure!

In Season 9’s Wildcard Mode, both Abilities AND Talents are random! Once you reach level 10, you’ll start rolling new abilities and talents: 

• You’ll roll a new talent every level
• You’ll roll a new ability every 2 levels

Both Abilities and Talents have rarities. They can be common, uncommon, rare, epic or even legendary. You’ll also roll brand new skills discovered from Shattered Mystic Enchantments. There are all sorts of new skills and talents, and there are no rarity limits.

No matter what rarity you roll, it only ever costs 1 point

Previously, game modes like Draft had many unintuitive rules, weighting, and restrictions: i.e. rolling a one ability may increase your chance to see another, even if you didn’t want it.

This was bloated, needlessly complicated, and often got in the way of simply enjoying the journey.

In Season 9, Wildcard Mode has NO RESTRICTIONS: no rarity caps, no masteries, no weighting, no hidden rules–just wild, random chance and your ability to unlock your hero’s potential. There’s no downside to keeping every epic and legendary you come across, no reason to reroll them if you don’t want to. You always have the same chance to see epic and legendary skills and talents, regardless of how many you currently have. You can keep getting stronger and progress infinitely.

Even better, any wild combination of abilities you get will scale with any gear you have. All abilities on Ascension have both Attack Power and Spell Power scaling: casters even get an auto attack bonus from their spell power! This means no matter what crazy build you discover, you’ll be able to play it.

Wildcard Mode:

• Roll random abilities and talents
  • Steer your hero by keeping the abilities and talents you want and re-rolling the ones you don’t
  • In Season 9, even talents are random
  • Including 1500+ new abilities
• Abilities and Talents have rarities
  • Common → Legendary
• Talents can be any rank from 1-5, with rank 5 talents being the highest rarity and most difficult to find
  • But ALL talents only cost ONE TALENT POINT
    • Get Rank 5 talents for 1 point
    • Become crazy strong
• There are NO CAPS
  • No rarity caps, no skill card caps, no masteries, no weighting, no bloat
  • Find dozens of epic and legendary abilities and keep them all
    • Finding them won’t lower your chance to get more
    • What you roll is completely, 100% random
      • There’s no weighting or hidden rules, no masteries, no restrictions, and no bloat
      • This season, you can get as strong as you want
  • Make unlimited progress
    • Keep every powerful epic and legendary you come across without lowering your chance to roll more
• Mix and match powerful Epic and Legendary skills and talents unlocked through Shattered Mystic Enchantments
• Over time, you’ll grow into a stronger hero than ever in Ascension’s history

How to Play:

• Start the game with 4 abilities
  • Control them with the new ‘lock’ system
  • ‘Lock-in’ the skills you want, and reroll new ones
• Start gaining Abilities and Talents at level 10
  • Gain a talent every level
  • Gain an ability every 2 levels
• Reach level 60 with a completely unique build that no one else has ever had or ever will
• Reroll weak abilities & talents with Scrolls of Fortune
• Gain Scrolls of Fortune just by playing the game: 
  • Silas Darkmoon Quests
  • Dungeons
  • Raids
  • PvP
  • Open World Content
• Improve your hero at end-game OR through Prestige

Scrolls of Fortune

Scrolls of Fortune are the main way to grow, improve, and empower your Hero. Use them to steer your build by rerolling your weakest talents and abilities into new ones. To do so, just click an ability you no longer want in the Character Advancement UI and reroll it to get something new!

• Scrolls of Fortune
  • Re-roll your weakest Wildcard abilities into new ones
  • Infinite progression: grow as strong as you want

You can find Scrolls of Fortune doing any content on Ascension:

• Find them as drops in the Open World
• Loot them from Dungeons
• Take them from Raid Bosses
• Claim them in Mythic+ and Callboard Caches
• Win them in Battlegrounds

There are 2 Types of Scrolls of Fortune to find:

• Scroll of Fortune
  • Used to reroll Abilities or Talents
• Scroll of Fortune: Talents
  • Used to reroll talents

Unlike past seasons, Scrolls of Fortune you find from doing content are uncapped, so you can continually progress and you never hit a wall. The more you adventure, the more you’ll be able to shape your Wildcard Hero.

Skill Cards

Skill Cards are an essential Wildcard item that helps steer you towards your destiny: when you slot a Skill Card at level 1, you’re guaranteed to get the ability at the level it’s usually unlocked. Every single ability and talent in the game has a skill card, including the 1500+ new skills and abilities introduced through Shattered Mystic Enchantments. This means you can gather the cards you want, prestige, and slot them for an even better build. This is a big way you grow stronger.

Skill Cards you find are automatically added to your Skill Card Collection, and are no longer items in your inventory. Open the new UI to see exactly what you have, how far you are from your next Sealed Pack, and what you currently have slotted!

You’ll find Skill Cards as you play the game:

• Off monsters that use that ability
• From iconic locations
• From Sealed Card Packs
  • Obtained from Silas Darkmoon

Tank and Healer Skill Cards are unlocked by default. You can find them immediately at level 1 in the new Skill Card UI. This is so Heroes eager to play Tanks or Healers can do so successfully right from the start of the season!

Additionally, there’s a great new way to find Skill Cards: you can find them off of monsters that use that ability. If you’re looking for a Frostbolt related Skill Card, try killing mobs that use Frostbolt.

Additionally, you can also find certain Epic and Legendary skill cards in iconic locations throughout the Open World. They’re hidden in mysterious places. Good luck finding them!

There are no Lucky Skill Cards in Season 9.

Skill Cards have rarities just like Abilities and Talents. However, there are no caps on what you can slot. You can slot all Epics or all Legendaries if you want! This is your primary way of mixing Epic and Legendary Shattered Enchantments. You wanna slot 10 legendary cards? Go ahead!

Along your journey, you’ll definitely run into duplicate Skill Cards. Extra ability Skill Cards automatically recycle themselves. When you fill your recycle bar, you’ll receive a Sealed Card Pack. 

Meanwhile, Talent Ability Cards upgrade into higher rarities. If you have a Rare Ignite Talent Skill Card, and you find a bunch of Common Ignite talent cards, it will eventually upgrade to an Epic Ignite Talent Skill Card, the 4/5 version. Collect even more, and you can fully upgrade your talent skill card into its Legendary form!

• Skill Cards are guaranteed abilities and talents
  • Slot them at level 1, and you’re guaranteed to roll that ability at the level it usually unlocks
• Every single ability and talent in the game has a Skill Card
  • Including the 1500+ new skills and talents
• You find them by playing the game
  • Off of monsters that use the ability
  • In iconic places
  • From Sealed Card Packs
• Tank and Healer Skill Cards are Unlocked by Default!
• A new UI makes using Skill Cards Simple
• There are no limits on the Skill Cards you can slot
  • Slot all legendaries if you want
• Duplicate Ability Skill Cards automatically recycle themselves
  • Fill the bar to get a free Sealed Card Pack
  • ot wasted:
• Duplicate Talent Skill Cards upgrade into higher rarity version of that talent
  • Collect duplicate talent skill cards to upgrade your card to Legendary

The main way to get Skill Cards is from Sealed Card Packs traded by Silas Darkmoon.

Silas Darkmoon

Silas Darkmoon is essential to your Wildcard Adventure: he provides the tools you need to progress and improve your Hero. You can trade him Marks of Ascension for Scrolls of Fortune, which you’ll use to re-roll unwanted abilities. You can also get Sealed Card Packs from Silas, which give you Skill Cards to improve your next Prestige run.

The Scroll of Fortune Quest Chain that Silas offers will gain more quests as time goes on, and will serve as a quick but limited way to get scrolls. Only so many quests will be available at a time. However, the Scrolls of Fortune you gain from Dungeons, Raids, Caches, and the Open World are unlimited – so use both to forge a legendary hero!

Finally, the Golden Skill Card Packs that Silas offers now grant both 5 Ability and 5 Talent Cards: giving you double the cards for the same gold price as past seasons. This boosts your ability to collect essential cards and steer your hero towards greatness.

As you exchange your Marks of Ascension for Scrolls of Fortune and open up Sealed Card Packs, you’ll find Darkmoon Tickets: items that can be exchanged for specific ability cards at the Darkmoon Prize Shop. Speak to Silas and select Darkmoon Prizes to see the list of Skill Cards you can grab!

Darkmoon Tickets are traded for Ability Skill Cards. You’ll find Talent Cards from Sealed Packs or out in the Open World!

• Trade for Scrolls of Fortune and Sealed Card Packs
• Scroll of Fortune Quest Chain
  • More Quests every day
• Golden Skill Card Packs now give both 5 ability and 5 talent cards
  • Gold Cost has not changed
• Darkmoon Tickets
  • Trade for Ability Skill Cards at Silas Darkmoon!

Making the Game Better

Wildcard - Default Character Buffs

Season 9 bakes many essential elements directly into Wildcard Heroes to ensure you can play the way you want without needing to get lucky and hit a bunch of core niche talents.

• When rolling Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury, or Mana-forged Barrier in Wildcard Mode, you automatically receive that stance’s Taunt ability by default
• Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury, and Mana-forged Barrier stances can now dodge, block, and parry while casting
• Tanks have Crit Immunity by default in Wildcard Mode
• Mana-Forged Barrier Buffs
• Power Surge capstone baked into MFB by default
• Mana-forged Barrier receives a new, unique Taunt
  • 
• Mana-Forged Barrier no longer prevents knockbacks
• Energy regeneration has been increased baseline to lower the requirement to get energy regen talents
• Devastate replaces Sunder Armor as an ability and no longer requires Defensive Stance. Now you can do damage while you Sunder Armor.
  • Devastate no longer requires Defensive Stance
  • Sunder Armor is gone
  • Devastate still applies Sunder Armor

Caster Spell Critical Strike

On Ascension, spell critical strikes hit for 150% normal damage. Additionally, you can increase this bonus using special talents like Ruin, Spell Power, and Vengeance:

However, the tooltip wasn’t very intuitive: the total critical strike bonus including these talents brought your Spell Critical Strike damage to 200% (the 50% bonus increased x2 to a total of 200% damage).

This wasn’t conveyed well in the tooltip, and made these talents more powerful than almost any other in the game. In Wildcard Mode, Heroes without these talents trying to play a caster would be at a huge disadvantage. So, two adjustments are being made:

• Casters now have a portion of the critical damage previous obtained from talents baked in baseline
  • Spell Critical Strike Damage increased from 150% → 175%
  • Talents like Ruin and Vengeance still increase Spell Critical Strike Damage to 200% total
    • No change, though these talents are now less power per point
• The wording of the tooltips of these talents have changed to be more clear

This change removes power from these talents and adds it to the heroes baseline, ensuring that even if you don’t roll these talents in Wildcard, you can still do competitive damage. 

It also serves as a small buff in the early game for both hybrids and caster heroes. Finally, though it does remove power from these talents, they were some of the most over-budgeted and strongest talents per-point in the game. This change not only buffs all heroes baseline, but brings these talents more in line with other options.

The following talents now grant 180/185/190/195/200% crit bonus damage:

• Spell Power (Arcane Mage)
• Ice Shards (Frost Mage)
• Burnout (Fire Mage)
• Holy Spec (Holy Priest)
• Shadow Power (Shadow Priest)
• Vengeance (Balance Druid)
• Ruin (Destruction Warlock)

With these changes the total critical damage bonus you can gain as a caster is still 200%, but you’ll now start with more than before without any talents.

The Complete Tooltip Overhaul

A massive Tooltip Overhaul arrives with Season 9 that cleans up Ability and Talent tooltips, improves clarity, and makes them make sense.

Previously, complicated tooltips made the game look way more complex than it actually was.

Example: Playing with Fire had a needlessly complex tooltip. 

Before: 

After:

• Every tooltip across the game has been looked at and improved where possible

Dynamic Tooltips

Many abilities and talents affect one another: and in the new Wildcard Mode, it’s possible to have one of these at a time without others. Dynamic Tooltips allow the tooltips that explain abilities to update based on which abilities and talents you have. For example, if you only have Vampiric Embrace, then the tooltip will look like this:

But if you then roll the new Vampire Lord talent, Vampiric Embrace will automatically update to look like this:

Dynamic Tooltips make sure that you’re always getting the most accurate information possible for how your abilities and talents are interacting with each other, so you can focus on playing.

• Tooltips now dynamically update depending on abilities you have that affect them

Massive Pet Rebalancing

With so many pets available on Ascension, getting a companion should feel exciting and strong. Pets receive some big updates with Season 9 to make them much more viable to to roll and use in Wildcard Mode. Whether you get a tamable Beast, Undead, Demon, Dragon, or Elemental, you’ll know you’re getting an awesome companion that’s effective, versatile, and fun to use.

ALL pets receive buffs across the board to their cooldowns and scaling, making them stronger and better to use.

• Pets now only cost 2AE in Wildcard
  • And can be rolled at all levels!
• The cooldowns of many Pet Skills have been reduced
• Scaling has been added to many Pet spells that didn’t scale
  • Making different pets useful
• Scaling auras have been added to inherit your stats
  • Pets now inherit your stats, meaning they’ll be stronger as you get stronger!

Undead

• Abomination Pet Family:
  • Strike ability now costs 35 energy down from 45 energy
  • Strike ability now deals 150% weapon damage up from 100% weapon damage
  • Cleave ability now costs 35 energy up from 20 energy
• Fixed an issue where Icebolt cast by the Lich pet Family was not correctly scaling from the pets Spell Damage
• Crypt Fiend Pet Family:
  • Claw ability is now a 2 second cooldown down from 4 seconds
  • Claw ability now deals 120% weapon damage up from 100%
• Banshee pet family’s Banshees Wail spell now has a 30 yard range up from 20 yard range

Demon

• Doomguard family’s Brutal Strike ability is now a 3 second cooldown from 30 seconds
• Pit Lord pet family’s Cleave ability is now a 2 second cooldown from 3 seconds
• Mo-arg Engineers Thorium Drill ability is now a 2 second cooldown from 20 seconds
  • (The additional damage portion has been reduced accordingly)
• Infernal pet family’s Cleave ability now has no cooldown, from 3 second cooldown
• Fixed an issue where the Torch ability from the Dreadsteed pet family had an incorrect mana cost
• Dreadsteed and Felsteed pet families now learn a new pet ability called Hoof Strike
• Terrorfiend pet family now learns a new pet ability called Strike
• Fixed an issue with Vanity item Summoners Stone: Decrepit Darkhound being incorrectly classified as a Satyr rather than a Darkhound.
• Saytr Pet Family:
  • Strike ability is now a 2 second cooldown down from 4 seconds
  • Strike ability is now an instant cast ability, instead of an ‘on next swing’ effect
  • Strike ability now costs 35 energy down from 40 energy

Dragon

• Black Wyrmkin pet family’s spell Dark Bolt no longer has a cooldown changed from a 5 seconds cooldown
• Black Whelp:
  • Lesser Fireball has had its level scaling reduced, from 1 damage per level to 0.5 per level
  • Fireball has had its level scaling increased from 2 per level to 6 per level
  • Fireball has had its Spell Damage scaling greatly increased
• Black Scalebane:
  • Strike is now a 2 second cooldown from 3 seconds
  • Strike now costs 35 energy down from 40 energy
• Black Drakonid: 
  • Brood Power: Black now has a 3 second cooldown down from 8 seconds
  • Brood Power: Black now costs 40 energy from 60 energy
  • Shadow Nova now has a 6 second cooldown down from 30 seconds
  • Shadow Nova now has a 10 yard range down from 15 yards
• Black Drake pet family’s Swipe ability now hits 5 targets up from 3 targets
• Black Dragon pet family’s ability Shadow Cleave no longer has a cooldown down from 6 seconds cooldown
• Blue Drake pet family now learns a new pet ability Frost Strike
• Blue Drakonid pet family’s ability Brood Power: Blue has had its scaling increased. (it now deals damage in proportion to its 1 minute cooldown)
• Blue Scalebane:
  • Frost Strike no longer has a cooldown down from 6 seconds
  • Frost Strike now costs 35 energy up from 30 energy
  • Frostbite Weapon is now instant cast down from 2 second cast
• Bronze Whelp pet family’s spell Chrono Mend is now 30 yard range up from 20 yard range
• Bronze Scalebane pet family’s ability Time Cleave now has a 2 second cooldown down from 6 seconds
• Green Wyrmkin:
  • Wrath now has a 2 second cast time down from 3 second cast time
  • Wrath now increases the nature damage taken from the dragonkin by 4% per stack down from 5%
  • Wrath now has a 3 second cooldown down from 4 seconds
• Fixed an issue where Minor Rejuvenation was scaling from the owner of the pets spirit
• Fixed an issue where the Rejuvenating Water pet spell was not scaling correctly
• Green Whelp pet family’s spell Acid Spit now has a 2 second cast time down from 3 second cast time
• Green Drake:
  • Nature’s Wrath no longer has a cooldown down from 6 seconds
  • Nature’s Wrath now has a 2 second cast time down from 3 seconds
• Red Drake pet family’sFlame Breath ability is now instant cast from 2 second cast time
• Red Scalebane:
  • Fire Nova spell now has a 6 second cooldown down from 30 seconds
  • Strike ability now has a 2 second cooldown down from 6
  • Strike ability now costs 35 energy down from 40
  • Strike ability now deals 100% weapon damage down from 125% weapon damage
• Netherwing Drake
  • Strike is now a 2 second cooldown from 3 seconds
  • Strike now costs 35 energy down from 40 energy
• Netherwing Drakonid:
  • Now learns a new pet ability: Strike
  • Strike is now a 2 second cooldown from 3 seconds
  • Strike now costs 35 energy down from 40 energy
  • Brood Power: Red has had its proc chance increased from 25% to 50%
• Fixed an issue where Chromatic Blast was not scaling correctly
• Netherwing Drake pet family now learns a new pet ability Strike
• Chromatic Drake pet family’s ability Chromatic Swipe now has 2 second cooldown down from 3 seconds
• Fixed an issue where Chromatic Breath was not scaling correctly
• Faerie Dragon pets Chain Lightning now has a 3 second cooldown down from 5 seconds
• Infinite Dragon:
  • Shadow Nova spell now has a 2 second cooldown down from 10 seconds
  • Shadow Nova spell now gains 1 damage per level down from 2
  • Shadow Nova spell now has a 8 yard radius from 15 yards
• Infinite Drake pet family’s Swipe Ability now hits 5 targets down from 10
• Infinite Scalebane pet family’s Void Strike ability now has a 4 second cooldown down from 6 seconds
• The Infinite Scalebane pet family’s Shadow Cleave ability now has a 4 second cooldown down from 6 seconds
• Infinite Drakonid:
  • Shadow Nova now has a 2 second cooldown down from 10 seconds
  • Shadow Nova now has a 8 yard radius down from 15 yards
  • Shadow Nova now costs 35 energy down from 60
  • Shadow Nova now gains 1 damage per level down from 2
• Fixed an issue where Shadow Spiral was not scaling correctly
• Fixed an issue where Shadow Blast was not scaling correctly
• Twilight Scalebane:
  • Twilight Nova spell now has a 6 second cooldown down from 15 seconds
  • Twilight Nova spell now has a 10 yard radius down from 15 yards
• Red, Green, Blue, Black, and Bronze Drakonids are now available to be tamed in the world

Elemental

• Lasher pet family’s Thrash ability no longer has a cooldown, from a former 3 second cooldown
• Phoenix pet family’s spell Smoldering Feathers no longer has a cooldown changed from a 6 second cooldown
• Fixed an issue where the Thorn Volley spell learned by various Lasher pet families had an incorrect mana cost

Buffing Buffs

Buffs are an essential part of getting swole before tackling content, but nobody likes individually targeting every single party member and pet and casting Arcane Intellect 8 times, which drains your time and your entire mana bar and now you have to sit for another 30 seconds to drink and get it back. Party Buffs solve this problem, but you only get those at level 60. This was needless friction.

All buffs (Mark of the Wild, Power Word: Fortitude, Arcane Intellect, etc.) now automatically target your entire group–party members, raid members, and pets–from rank 1. Now you can revive, press your buffs once, and know your whole crew is good to go.

Manastorm

Enter a wild new adventure where chaos grows the deeper you get! Welcome to the Manastorm!

The Manastorm is an Endless Wildcard Dungeon. Play solo, as a group, or even as a 10-man raid and enter the storm: when you do, you’ll be dropped into a random segments of your favorite Dungeon, Open World areas, or even completely new dungeons that have been altered by wild magic–and you need to find and kill the boss. 

• You can find both Dungeons and iconic Open World Areas in the Manastorm!

If you succeed, you’ll open a portal to the next location. Storm through portals and dive as deep as you can! 

But be warned: every level you progress, monsters grow stronger and stranger. Defias in Shadowfang Keep! Worgen beneath Orgrimmar, Murlocs in Zul’Farrak, or all of them together at the same time! In the Manastorm, things are gonna’ get weird.

The Manastorm was made to maximize freedom, flexibility, and variety. It’s a game-mode where everyone can jump straight in at any time with no friction or delay. Play how you want with any group size, from level fifteen all the way into the end-game.

Any group composition can play in the Manastorm. From the traditional Tank, Healer, and DPS, to entire groups of just one role, the Manastorm allows for any combination of heroes to dive in.

• The Manastorm unlocks at level 15
• Any group size 1 to 10 players
• Any combination of any roles
  • Tank, Healer, DPS
  • DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS
  • Tank, Tank, DPS
• Leveling and at the end-game
• The perfect difficulty to challenge YOU

There are several additional changes present only while in the Manastorm to help facilitate any group combination:

• All players are immune to Critical Strikes in the Manastorm
  • Helps open up group compositions like multiple DPS
• Casters have 100% Pushback resistance
• Spell casts benefit from Manastorm Time-Warp
• Creatures have increased Stealth detection inside the Manastorm

In the Manastorm, you can progress wherever and however you want. Whether you’re just starting out or have been playing for 8 years, with infinite levels of difficulty, you’ll find a challenge that’s right for you. 

The Manastorm is endless: how deep will you make it?

The Manastorm offers a complete adventure where you can jump in with as few or as many allies as you want! Level up, gear up, and play the way you want. The Manastorm even goes into the end-game, as you progress into deeper levels and earn higher difficulty raid loot.

Unique Manastorm Items

In the Manastorm, all Heroes start with a few unique items to help you succeed regardless of your team composition:

• Manastorm Potion
  • A reusable potion that heals a large % of your health and mana
• Millhouse’s Magical Escape
  • Remove all movement impairing effects, disarms, silences, and all effects which cause loss of control of your character
• Millhouse’s Regeneration Matrix
  • This is a resurrection spell you can use on fallen allies. Using this consumes a resurrection charge for that level

• Every mob you kill has a chance to drop a Health Orb
  • Heal up without needing a Healer in the party
  • Rewards you for doing more DPS as opposed to just being really tanky

These additions ensure that any composition of Heroes has a chance to succeed in the Manastorm, so that you can focus on playing the way you want, rather than meeting specific requirements.

Affixes

As you delve deeper into the Manastorm and complete areas, the monsters grow stronger and more random. In deeper levels, affixes start to appear. These affixes change every level and keep you on your toes. If you roll an affix you don’t like, you’re not stuck with it, it is gone after that level. The further you push into the storm, the more crazy your encounters will become. There are:

• Creature Affixes
• Player Affixes
• Boss Affixes

Keep going until the chaos consumes you! 

Your party has 5 Resurrection Charges per level, and you cannot release when you die! If your entire party is defeated, you’ll be pushed out of the Storm and rewarded based on how far you got.

Manastorm Item Scaling

You can enter the Manastorm starting at level 15. As you progress, both monsters and the items you find scale to you. This means you can use the Manastorm to level and gear up, finding high-level versions of classic Dungeon Items. 

The Manastorm will update with all kinds of new content as Ascension creates and releases it. From custom boss encounters to custom world-map segments, everything cool Ascension creates can find a home in the manastorm–meaning it can improve endlessly.

Manastorm Rewards:

In the Manastorm, you’ll receive more rewards the further you make it. Every time you take down a Storm, you’ll get a Manastorm Cache containing gear, so you can continue to gear up while you play. Then, when you’re defeated and pushed out of the Storm, you’ll receive additional rewards based on the levels you completed.

• Every Manastorm you complete while leveling gives you a Manastorm Cache
• Every 5 Manastorms you complete at max level gives you an End-Game Manastorm Cache
  • Rewards based on the current realm releases and the level you are on
• When you are thrown out of the Manastorm you are rewarded based on the levels you completed
  • Marks of Ascension
  • Scrolls of Fortune to reroll abilities and talents
  • Skillcard Packs
  • Tokens to trade in at Millhouse himself for cosmetics

Additionally, Cogsworth sells an array of permanent Manastorm Potions that can help you with future runs! These items are not consumed on use, so once you get one, you can use it on every future Manastorm run.

The Manastorm is available for testing RIGHT NOW on both the Conquest of Azeroth and Wrath of the Lich King Alphas.

Steel yourselves for chaos, Hero: the Manastorm awaits.

Prestige Updates

Leveling is one of the greatest adventures in Azeroth, and Prestige Mode was built for you to relive that adventure and progress into the end-game.

Season 9 fixes the pacing of Prestige Mode so you can play the way you want.

First, a 25% flat increase to experience helps Prestiging Heroes go faster while the overall experience has been reduced by 20%. This change will make it so the experience rates during a prestige can feel great, while ensuring new players can learn the game at a steady pace.

Second, the Prestige Daily Quest found on Chromie transforms into a Prestige World Buff! Rather than being a once-per-day quest, you can now use the World Buff as many times as you want, and it won’t go away after a single prestige. 

With all the new abilities and talents to discover in Wildcard Mode, the 1-60 journey has infinite potential. Find wild new combinations, play the way you want, and discover your destiny through Prestige!

 

• Prestige Experience is increased by 25%
  • Overall experience rates are reduced by 20%, to let new players take it easy and veteran players zoom if they want
• Prestige Buffs now last the entire day, not just until you turn in the daily
• Removed annoying mail for Prestiging Players like Scrolls of Unlearning

Heirloom Items

Heirloom Items used to have a base version and an upgraded version that offered increased EXP. This was so Heroes who wanted to go fast could get items that allowed them to do so. However, this created discrepancies when groups tried to level together where some with upgraded heirlooms leveled faster than others.

Heirlooms have been collapsed into one version that offers all of their benefits including the increased EXP. They’re available both in-game and on the shop.

• Heirlooms collapsed into one version
  • Heirlooms used to have two versions: a base version and an upgraded version that gave an EXP boost
  • These are collapsed into one version that gives all the benefits
  • Available both in-game and on the shop

All LFG Dungeons Now Scale 15-59

In the past, a big issue with LFG queues was that you would get put into the same low level dungeons over and over. There were always low-level heroes queueing to level or prestige, and lower levels had access to less dungeons.

• With updates to creature scaling, all dungeons are now available at all levels 15-59
• Additionally, like the Manastorm, all items from all dungeons now scale down to level 15 and all the way up to 60

Now, you not only have access to a wider variety of dungeons to spice up your adventure and play the way you want, you can play with your friends at more levels, get faster queues, and find cooler items while leveling to outfit your Wildcard Hero.

Zone Scaling

In Season 8, Zone Scaling opened up iconic vanilla zones for you to adventure in by ensuring they scaled to your level. This allowed Heroes to fully adventure in zones like Redridge, Stonetalon Mountains, and Silverpine Forest fully without out-leveling the zones.

Previously, zones scaled to level 40 and did not include Contested Territories.

Now, all zones scale to 60 so you can play however you want.

Quests, creatures, and even items now all dynamically scale based on your level, so you can now complete your dream of killing 65,340,285 boars in Elwynn Forest to hit level cap. Level where you want, Heroes!

• Level Scaling will now match your exact level
  • This fixes an issue where you and your friends would level at different rates
• Zones will NOT scale DOWN, only up from their original level to maintain RPG progression
• Zones will NOT scale in High-Risk PvP to keep people in the same level brackets in the same zones to avoid griefing and encourage people who can fight each other into the same area

Adventure Mode

Step into ADVENTURE with a brand new Challenge Mode!

Adventure Mode is a quest-focused adventure that aims to return danger and excitement to leveling in the Open World. In Adventure Mode, you control the difficulty of the Open World. Make your adventure as deadly as you want as you tackle Azeroth solo or with a party. In Adventure Mode, quests you complete grant massively increased experience, and you can find dungeon loot off of monsters you slay.

You can start Adventure Mode at Stony Tark, and set the challenge difficulty from 1-100. Once you do, all monsters in the Open World will scale accordingly.

But it’s not easy! Monsters have more dangerous behavior, more health, and deal more damage–and the higher you set the difficulty, the more dangerous navigating the world will become. You WON’T be able to just steamroll through the Open World: you’ll have to strategize and use the full range of your Wildcard Hero to succeed.

Adventure Mode recaptures the magic of challenging a dangerous world, where every encounter demands your attention and ingenuity as you take on Azeroth in brand new ways. Choose your difficulty and set off into Adventure Mode!

• Every monster on Azeroth becomes elite
  • More Health
  • More Damage
• Monsters have more dangerous behavior
  • Aggro in packs
  • Increased Aggro range
  • …and more
• Choose your Difficulty
  • 1-100
• Solo or with any group size
• Level primarily through Questing
  • Quests give massively increased EXP
• Find Dungeon Loot off of monsters you slay in the Open World
  • Gear up while playing!

Adventure Mode Rewards

Adventure Mode features its own unique rewards for completion. Here’s a few:

Stick on a Carrot:

Ponzo’s Dapper Topper:

Stone of Retreat Goldshire & Razor Hill:

Massive Vanilla Itemization Overhaul

Over the last few seasons and chapters, an increasing effort has been made to improve weak Vanilla items to make them unique, valuable, and useful for a wide variety of builds and specs. Many items in Vanilla just didn’t serve a clear function, and were weak or straight up worse than other, better items.

With Season 9, Ascension looked at EVERY ITEM across Vanilla and continued to tweak weak items to be AWESOME.

This change affects vanilla gear across Dungeons, Raids, Quests, Leveling Gear, and more, which will now be useful to many heroes and builds, rather than some items being ubiquitously bad in all situations. The change also reduces the power of a small number of big outliers. A lot of care was taken to maintain the essence of iconic items while still improving underused items to make them relevant for specific niches.

Introduced more diverse stat combinations to Vanilla items

Season 9 introduces more diverse stat combinations to vanilla includes, including stats from WotLK. 

First, brand new stats like Haste and Armor Penetration now appear on certain Vanilla items to provide new and varied equipment options for heroes. These stats were previously only introduced in the latter half of the expansion, creating asymmetries in build balance and creating scenarios where you weren’t able to effectively play certain archetypes. With these new stats unavailable in early Vanilla but available later, it was impossible to balance specs over the long-term: especially during new seasons that return to earlier Vanilla where these stats aren’t available at all.

Now that’s all ironed out! Play what you want, when you want, and gear up doing it!

• Every single Vanilla item has been looked at and overhauled if necessary to be useful
• Weak Vanilla items improved
• Vanilla items differentiated from each other to be useful in different niches

Introduced New Item Affixes

You can now find new item affixes on item drops!

Item affixes (of the Bear, of the Eagle) add additional stats on certain items. Now, that pool of affixes is expanded so you can find even more epic stats on your favorite gear. This is especially useful when getting items from things like Dungeon Spoils, where these items are common.

Align item levels more closely with power levels and the item’s potential to make progression more intuitive

This change adjusts the item level of items to more appropriately reflect their power and make progression intuitive. If you get a really strong piece and your item level jumps up, you’ll know you’re strong enough for harder content.

Introduced Missing Tier Sets

Originally, Tier Sets and their bonuses were designed for an entire class without taking into account the specific spec you were playing. This meant, for example, that all Paladins wore the same tier set regardless of if they were Holy, Protection, or Retribution. Later expansions introduced set bonuses for multiple specializations, rather than a universal one for the class, which expanded your options for gearing.

On Ascension, each specialization for each class now has its own unique set bonus. Now you have even greater variety in mixing and matching gear to fit your unique Wildcard hero!

Differentiating Weapon Speeds

As part of the attempt to improve Vanilla itemization and buff weaker items, weapon speeds are being fine-tuned to ensure each weapon stands out, providing distinct advantages for various abilities. Key Vanilla weapons have had their speeds analyzed, and slower weapon speeds have been differentiated where necessary to make each useful and exciting in their own right:

• Example: Spinal Reaper
  • Brought from 3.6 Speed to 3.7 Speed

Spinal Reaper was just a worse Bonereaver’s Edge, but will now actually be great for unnormalized attacks like Slam, Crush and Mortal Strike:

Nice.

New World Bosses

Two new, original World Bosses arrive in Vanilla with Season 9! 

These epic custom bosses have completely original spells and mechanics to challenge large groups of heroes. Take them down, and everyone who participated will earn loot!

These new Raid Bosses add more exciting content to the Open World so that there’s always something for you to discover and challenge. Like all World Bosses, these two will spawn in both No Risk and High Risk, and announce their appearance in World Chat when they arrive. They are also visible on the map.

Atal’zul, the Soulreaver

Soggoth, the Dark Eye

Gather your allies, set off into the world, and challenge their colossal might.

These two World Bosses introduce completely new items for you to discover. Take these foes down, capture their power, and dominate Season 9!

• New World Bosses
  • Two new, original World Bosses in Vanilla
  • Custom Spells and Mechanics
  • Announced in World Chat when they spawn
  • Visible on Map
  • Brand new items

Mythic+ Updates

• Mythic+ Caches now have a chance to drop Normal/Heroic Raid Gear
  • Find gear relevant to your unique hero
  • Get it playing how you want
• Mythic+ Dungeons now award more Marks of Ascension upon completion
  • Use for Scrolls of Fortune
• Mythic Coin Cap increases
  • Upgrade more of your mythic items
• Mythic+ 40 rewards you with additional rewards
  • Incentivize you going even further beyond!

Mythic+ ensures a worthy challenge no matter where you are on your journey: if you want to test the strength of your Wildcard Build, or walk the path to improving it, find your destiny in Mythic+. 

Potion Changes

• Potions now have two separate categories:
  • Potions
  • Combat Potions
• Combat Potions are a new category of potions that largely provide only offensive bonuses. Examples are Haste Potions, Potion of Mighty Rage, etc. 
  • Combat Potions will not share a cooldown with normal potions
    • This means you can use a Health Potion and a Haste Potion without them putting each other on cooldown
• Regular Potions (Health, Mana, etc) still share a cooldown with one another but will not put Combat Potions on cooldown

Raid Trials

Many Heroes want to push the limits of how far they can progress, and have resorted to doing insane challenges like Nightmare Ascended Raiding in pursuit of a worthy challenge. Now, control of raid difficulty is completely in your hands:

Introducing Raid Trials!

Raid Trials allow you to infinitely scale your favorite dungeons and raids to increase the Health and Damage of monsters as much as you want. This puts control of difficulty in your hands, and ensures that raids can continue to challenge you as you grow crazy strong on your Wildcard journey.

The system is simple: find Tony Stark at the beginning of your Raid, set the difficulty, and go! The monsters will adjust based on your difficulty level, and you can fight as hard as you like with infinite levels of difficulty. As you push deeper into Raid Trials, you’ll earn your place on Leaderboards and win incredible cosmetics as you climb ever higher in your journey. 

Raid Trials are set up so they can continue to be expanded on over time with things like affixes if there is interest.

Push beyond your limits, and earn your place amongst legends.

New Trials

Six new Trials arrive with Chapter 9 to offer new ways to level, prestige, and challenge yourself.

• Big Game Hunter
  • Roam Azeroth in search of 10 notorious beasts and take them down before reaching certain levels
• Dungeon Delver
  • An single life challenge where you’ll need to clear every vanilla dungeon Solo
• Deep Sea Nightmare
  • Exchange your lungs for gills and wander Azeroth dehydrating! Touch water to recover your breath, and try to reach level cap
• Encumbered
  • Have you ever thought to yourself “Gosh I sure wish I had zero bag space” then this is the trial for YOU! No additional bag slots, bank, or anything! Have fun!
• MEGA Spellbind Roulette
  • Cast carefully, hero: one of your abilities is marked for death every 3 seconds, and if you use it you DIE
• Trollbane
  • Decimate 6 troll leaders scattered across Azeroth! From the Sandfury Trolls located in Tanaris, to the forest trolls deep within the Sunken Temple!

Additional Trial Changes:

• The Hardcore Challenge White Knight no longer removes bags
• Trial Mark Rewards have been tweaked:
  • You now receive more initial marks for completing a Trial for the first time, and less for subsequent repeats
  • Frontloads the bonus for completing trials

Callboard Quest Overhaul

The Hero’s Call Board is an essential feature for Heroes looking to grab Marks of Ascension, Mystic Items, and gear. However, some of the quests are a bit outdated.

In particular, quests like Population Control and Keeping Evil at Bay could be scattered all across Azeroth, forcing you to trudge through multiple zones and wait to kill monsters that had terrible respawn times. Not anymore with the Callboard Quest Overhaul!

The Callboard Quest Overhaul streamlines Call Board World Quests by ensuring that the quests all appear in the same general location. Every day, an area and sub-area are selected, and six quests relevant to that zone appear on the board. This helps everyone flock to the same location to group up, complete quests, and get rewards–or kill each other in action-packed World PvP if you’re in High-Risk. No matter what you’re there for, this update makes it much more appealing to take on these quests, and incentivizes more Heroes to flock to the same zone. Look forward to epic gamer moments as you tackle the new Call Board Quests!

• Call Board Quests updated to be more appealing to complete

Invasions Return

Scourge and Legion Invasions return for Season 9! 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 together 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 Season.

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
• At max level, take the boss down to earn current tier epic loot!
• Invasions are NOT forced PvP
• 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

Cross-Faction Guilds

It is finally happening. Cross-Faction guilds are coming to both realms in Season 9. Play whatever race and faction you want, while still allowing you to join any guild to tackle content.

Black Temple

Get prepared, Heroes: the gates of Black Temple open on Area 52!

Storm(rage) into the most iconic raid in all of TBC: Black Temple arrives on Free Pick in January. Gather your guilds and recruit new allies from thousands of Heroes merged from Season 8! This is a chance for everyone to come together and experience Black Temple, along with the new secrets it holds.

Just like all Ascension raids, higher difficulties of Black Temple have new mechanics befitting of this iconic raid. Climb the temple’s summit and challenge Illidan Stormrage at its peak. Will you overcome the lord of Outland, or fall to his mighty twin blades?

New Character Advancement UI

A new Character UI not only improves the fidelity of icons, but also more clearly shows what is available for you to learn, its rarity, cost, and how many essential items you have like Scrolls! This new UI is coming to both Area 52 and Season 9.

Build Creator UI Update on Area 52

Creating builds on Free Pick is one of the most exciting and challenging parts of Ascension. On Area 52, the Build Creator helps veterans and new players share, explore, and perfect hundreds of unique builds. With Season 9, it receives polish to improve how easy it is to use. This re-worked UI features an uncapped description length so that you can get really in-depth with guides. It also receives technical improvements to make it smoother and more responsive.

• Upgrades to the Build Creator on Area 52
• More Functionality
• Less Lag

Timeline Changes and a Faster Start

Season 9 gets you into your favorite parts of Ascension sooner with a faster timeline that sees a wider variety of content released sooner. Mythic+, the Arena, and first-tier Raids will all be available sooner than in the past. This allows Heroes to enjoy the start of Season 9, level up, gear up, and party up together.

Improvements to Malik the Courier 

On past seasonal launches, experience and convenience items like Potions and Riding Tomes were disabled until the first of each race hit level 60. This was done to ensure everyone could race for Realm Firsts achievements without spending DP.

Over time, there has been an increasing amount of feedback from players upset they could not use their Recruit-a-Friend they already had or potions and auras at launch. Many people simply ended up not playing until the race was over and these items were active. This resulted in people simply not playing on launch so that they could level fast and not waste their time.

So here’s the solution:

1. You can now use your gold on Area 52 to grab Potions, Auras, and Riding Tomes
2. Malik the Courier now lets you send these items to new Seasons, where they’ll be available at launch
   1. Sending an item this way causes it to become SOULBOUND
      1. Any potion, aura, or riding tome you send will be soulbound to you

This allows the following benefits:

• Allows ALL players to use their Area 52 gold to get Potions and Auras for realm starts
• People who compete for Realm First want to go fast–now they can just spend gold to get what they need to go as fast as possible without ever having to use DP
• Adds a viable gold sink to Area 52
• Simplifies and streamlines how realm launches work
• You can prep for the Season 9 launch right now
• Spend your gold from past Seasons

This change helps you get convenience items without DP, respects your time, and gets you straight into the action on day 1.

Just like pre-orders, any items you send to the Season 9 realm will arrive on your first created character on the realm, so collect what you want and mail it over in preparation for Season 9! Any item you send will be SOULBOUND when it arrives.

Season 9 Chapters

Season 9 introduces four distinct chapters: two for Vanilla, and two for TBC. Unlike past seasonal chapters, these will focus more on adding cool new stuff to the season, rather than big foundational shifts that may be disruptive to gameplay. New Quests, World Bosses, Items, Features, Battlegrounds and Arenas, cosmetics, and more epic content are all on the table for chapters.

Each chapter also expands the Seasonal Collection, so you can complete achievements to grab Seasonal Points to trade for exclusive cosmetics. Like before, chapters will be announced in advance so that you can prepare. This gives Heroes a crystal clear timeline and plenty of time to enjoy their favorite expansion before moving onto the next big thing.

• Additionally, the seasonal achievements is now properly realm-wide. This will allow you to accumulate the seasonal achievements from all of your characters together. 

They also serve as a great opportunity for you to jump back into the season with tens of thousands of other players. Look forward to tons of epic content as you seize your destiny in Azeroth and beyond!

• Season 9 features 4 chapters
• Chapters move away from large, foundational updates
• Instead focus on adding cool new, focused stuff to the game

Best PvP Gear from Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds are an epic way to PvP on Ascension, and Classless BG’s are something many heroes enjoy. However, in past seasons, a strange trend emerged:

Many players quit because they didn't have the gear they needed to compete: and the heroes that kept playing would queue for the Arena, get their gear, and then never do another Arena again and just play Battlegrounds. This is because to get the best gear, you had to play Arena–you might not have wanted to play Arena, but you had to if you wanted to compete. 

That’s dumb. Ascension is about playing the way you want.

You should not have to do content you don’t want to do to unlock the majority of the power needed to compete: if you JUST want to play Battlegrounds, you should be able to do that and progress.

Now you can:

Arena Gear, the best PvP gear in the game, can now be purchased with Honor as well as Arena Points, allowing Heroes who love Battlegrounds to get the best gear by playing the way they want. In Wildcard, where everyone’s builds are going to be drastically different, this is the right time to explore this change.

Additionally, Battlegrounds now also award more Marks of Ascension for completion. This incentivizes Heroes to finish the Battleground to achieve maximum rewards.

Good luck in combat, Heroes!

• You can now get the best PvP gear in the game with Honor
• Battlegrounds now award more Marks of Ascension for completion
  • Prioritizing finishing the BG

Diminishing Returns Upgrades

Crowd Control on Ascension has always been problematic in PvP, and is the most complained about mechanic in PvP on a recent balance survey. A recent Discord survey revealed that no other aspect of PvP frustrated Heroes more than CC by a factor of x10.

Crowd Control also has never been tailored to make sense in Classless: the meta PvP strategy was to pick as many different categories of CC as possible (stun, incapacitate, fear, horrify, etc.) to maximize how oppressive you could be to your opponent. Not only was this not intuitive to players who had no idea there were different categories of CC, but it also resulted in all PvP heroes choosing the exact same CC’s, because you had to have one from every category. You couldn’t focus on CC’s you preferred: you couldn’t even aesthetically pick the spells you wanted, because if you were playing, say, a horrifying Shadow Warlock and wanted to have Fear, Psychic Scream, and Mass Hysteria, you couldn’t because they were all ‘fear’ effects. 

Some of the problems:

• CC on Ascension doesn’t resemble Blizzlike: you can pick spells from each category, the expectations are already broken
• As a result, most people don’t know what the current DR categories are
  • Those who maximize these categories end up able to chain CC much longer than other players
• The way these categories are setup now severely limits what combinations of CC you can use, forming a stale meta
• CC and DR have never really been tailored for Classless. 
  • It was never really assessed what actually makes the most sense for classless: a game where anyone can pick up every and any category as they wish, or when they roll these things randomly.

With that in mind, here are the goals of the first set of steps for CC and DR.

Goals:

• Create a more foundationally understandable framework for CC and then balance around that.
• Make a CC system that is more tailored for classless where everyone can choose everything
• Reduce the stale and limiting meta that happens CC category stacking
• Open up as many CC combinations as possible for use

Old DR Categories

• General DR
  • Freezing Trap, Scatter Shot, Gouge, Sap, Hex, Hibernate, Cyclone, Polymorph, Dragon's Breath, Shackle, Seduction (Pet), Fear (Warlock), Howl of Terror, Intimidating Shout, Psychic Scream, Scare Beast, Turn Evil
• Horror / Long CC
  • Death Coil, Psychic Horror, Repentance, Wyvern sting, Blind, Blinding Light, Ring of Frost
• Controlled Root
  • Frost Nova, Freeze (Water Elemental), Pin (Crab), Entangling Roots (also from Nature's Grasp), Earthgrab (Earth's Grasp), Frost Shock (Frozen Power)
• Random Root
  • Frostbite, Shattered Barrier, Improved Hamstring, Seal of Justice
• Controlled Stun
  • Bash, Concussion Blow, Deep Freeze, Inferno Effect (Inferno summon), Hammer of Justice, Intercept (Warrior), Intimidation, Kidney Shot, Maim, Shadowfury, Shockwave, Sonic Blast (pet), War Stomp, Cheap Shot, Pounce, Impact
• Random Stun
  • Stoneclaw Stun, Mace Specialization, Concussion (Capstone effect) , Earthquake, Impact
• Disarm
  • Chimera Shot - Scorpid, Disarm, Psychic Horror (Disarm effect), Snatch, Fiery Payback, Improved Counterattack (Capstone effect)
• Silence
  • Arcane Torrent, Gag Order (Warrior talent), Garrote, Improved Counterspell, Nether Shock, Silencing Shot, Improved Kick, Improved Kidney Shot, Shield of the Templar, Silence (Priest), Spell Lock

New DR Categories

• CC THAT DOES BREAK 
  • Freezing Trap, Scatter Shot, Gouge, Sap, Hex, Hibernate, Polymorph, Dragon's Breath, Shackle, Seduction (Pet), Fear (Warlock), Howl of Terror, Intimidating Shout, Psychic Scream, Scare Beast, Turn Evil, Repentance, Wyvern sting, Blind, Blinding Light, Ring of Frost, Hypnosis

• CC THAT DOESN’T BREAK -
  • Bash, Concussion Blow, Cyclone, Deep Freeze, Inferno Effect (Inferno summon), Hammer of Justice, Intercept (Warrior), Intimidation, Kidney Shot, Maim, Shadowfury, Shockwave, Sonic Blast (pet), War Stomp, Cheap Shot, Pounce, Impact, Earthquake, Death Coil, Psychic Horror

• Controlled Root
  • Frost Nova, Freeze (Water Elemental), Pin (Crab), Entangling Roots (also from Nature's Grasp), Earthgrab (Earth's Grasp), Frost Shock (Frozen Power). Improved Hamstring

• Random Stun -
  • Stoneclaw Stun, Mace Specialization, Concussion (Capstone effect), Impact

• Random Root
  • Frostbite, Shattered Barrier, Seal of Justice

• Disarms and Silences
  • Chimera Shot - Scorpid, Disarm, Psychic Horror (Disarm effect), Snatch, Fiery Payback, Improved Counterattack (Capstone effect), Arcane Torrent, Gag Order (Warrior talent), Garrote, Improved Counterspell, Nether Shock, Silencing Shot, Improved Kick, Improved Kidney Shot, Shield of the Templar, Silence (Priest), Spell Lock

These changes are the beginning of crafting a more foundational framework for PvP utility. The new system is more tailored for a classless environment (where everyone can choose everything), and will help reduce the stale and limiting meta that happens with CC category stacking while at the same time opening up as many different CC combinations as possible for use.

From here, many other changes will be made to improve the pacing and flow of PvP with these new foundations for Diminishing Returns.

New Arena Maps

Three brand new, completely custom Arena Maps arrive with Season 9 to spice up PvP! Each map features similar terrain to the locations you know and love, but with brand new flavor and feel to keep things fresh. Look forward to dominating each new arena!

These maps will arrive on both Season 9 and Area 52.

Halls of the Guardian

The Maker’s Terrace

• 3 New, Original Arena Maps 
  • On both Season 9 and Area 52

High Risk

Streamlined Marks of Ascension farming in High-Risk

Gaining Marks of War through High-Risk has been streamlined to remove unnecessary steps and allow everyone to risk farming them. Combining High-Risk materials no longer grants Mark of Ascension. Instead, all creatures that drop High-Risk materials will just drop Marks of War. These marks do not drop on death, meaning every High-Risk session reaps rewards and helps you grow stronger.

Acquiring Scroll of Fortune and Skill Cards in High-Risk

You can now find Scrolls of Fortune and Skill Cards in High-Risk! All creatures that drop High-Risk materials can also drop Marks of War. This means you can find Marks, a Scroll of Fortune AND a Skill Card Pack from a single creature kill if fortune smiles upon you, maximizing your time spent farming in the High-Risk world and ensuring the rewards match the risk. Scroll of Fortunes drop as a Case of Fortune, allowing you to swap to the spec you want the Scrolls of Fortune in. You get to choose which spec to progress.

High-Risk Crafting

High Risk Consumables are epic crafting items that can only be found in High Risk. Using them, you can create epic end-game buffs like food and item enchantments (belt buckles, cape linings). 

In past Seasons, these upgrades have been seen as mandatory for high-end play, and Heroes felt forced to get them to be at their best. 

• High-Risk PvP now awards a 10% experience boost while in this Risk Mode!
• Streamlined Mark of Ascension farming in High-Risk
• High-Risk now drops Scrolls of Fortune and Skill Card packs!
  • Any creature in Tier zones that drops High-Risk Materials can drop Marks of War, Scrolls of Fortune and Skill Card packs
  • Creatures at material POI’s have a higher drop chance
  • Higher Tiers drop Marks of War more often at higher qualities
  • Random Rares have a further increased drop chance
• Season 9 tunes down High-Risk Enchantments and Consumables a bit to make them less mandatory
  • Previously, High-Risk consumables and items like Back and Belt enchantments were so powerful that many heroes felt forced to get them to be at their best
  • They’ll still provide power for Heroes who want to seek them out, but will feel less like you NEED to get them in order to be competitive

Controller Support

Ascension is experimenting with a controller support mod, which will let you play Ascension with a controller! It’s currently experimental, but will be available in the ‘mods’ section of the Launcher. It will require a bit of setup, but instructions will be provided along with the mod!

This experimental controller support uses Steam Big Picture mode, available here:
https://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture

Split Patches

Ascension recently split its patches for faster downloading, and the Launcher improved to download faster as well. You should see updates finish a lot faster now in the Launcher, which is great because the game is updated a lot. Enjoy the updates, Heroes: but enjoy them faster.

Conclusion

Prepare to dive into the Season and seize your destiny! Season 9 releases on December 15th. Roll the dice, forge order from chaos, and create a Hero that no one else has ever had or ever will. Get ready, Hero: as daybreak hits, your Wildcard adventure begins…