Blizzard nerfs Shards of Domination set bonuses, adjusts SoD, and adds excess Anima broker in latest WoW hotfix

Blizzard issued a hotfix yesterday in World of Warcraft, targeting Sanctum of Domination, excess Anima, and an undocumented change targeting Shards of Domination.

While some changes are already live, the others will be live with the next realm restart during the weekly maintenance. Sanctum of Domination’s adjustments was targeted at Remnant of Ner’zhul and Kel’Thuzad to make the fights smoother by having consistent cast time of certain key mechanics.

• Sanctum of Domination
  • Remnant of Ner’zhul
    • Adjusted the recast of Orb of Torment to ensure it is cast more consistently on Mythic difficulty.
    • Orbs of Torment have had their health reduced by 66% on Mythic difficulty.
    • Adjusted the recast of Malevolence to ensure it is cast more consistently on Mythic difficulty.
  • Kel’Thuzad
    • No longer maintains his mana between phases, and now resets to 100 mana when he exits the Phylactery Phase.

With players stacking up a lot of Anima, Blizzard decided to add a broker going by the name Ko’tul in the Great Vault, who will gladly accept your anima caches of tradeskill goods, including Korthite Crystals, the latest currency added in Patch 9.1. The main reasoning for this is that while some players have unlocked everything in their Covenant, Blizzard doesn’t want to add new one-time sinks and instead give players something to spend Anima on. This was not the only change related to Anima, with Blizzard increasing the re-purchase price of Covenant armor sets to reflect the greater abundance of Anima.

One of the biggest undocumented changes was related to the Shards of Domination set bonuses. A player noticed this yesterday and shared the bonus on Reddit. Players asked Blizzard if this was a mistake or intentional. Shortly after, Senior System Designer Jeff Hamilton tweeted that the change is intentional, but was supposed to go with the next weekly reset, but due to a human error went live instantly.

According to players, the SoD set bonuses were nerfed by the following amounts:

• Blood: Blood Link nerfed by 40 percent,
• Frost: Winds of Winter nerfed by 17 percent,
• Unholy: Chaos Bane nerfed by 50 percent.

One of the biggest frustrations within the community is that they spent a lot of Stygian Ember currency, which is required to acquire the SoD’s, only to end up with them nerfed shortly after. With players acquiring a lot of gear and making Mythic+ and Raids trivial, Blizzard took a proactive approach and decided to nerf these set bonuses before they got out of hand and allowed players to easily clear through content. However, a 40 or 50 percent nerf that was applied to the Blood and Unholy sets seem too much, which might force players to farm the currency once again to acquire the Frost set that wasn’t impacted that significantly.