WoW SoD hotfixes: All hotfixes in WoW Classic Season of Discovery

Jan. 4 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

• Boon of Blackfathom no longer applies to pets.
  • Developer’s Note: “We are essentially removing the ability for pets to get Boon of Blackfathom for now. Now that pets scale with stats, allowing them to get certain world buffs would effectively let them “double dip” on these effects and gain far more damage than intended. We’ll continue to review this as we move through the content phases and make adjustments to how world buffs interact with pets as needed.”

Jan. 2 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

Blizzard started the post-holiday season updates with a quality-of-life change to Battle for Ashenvale by adding two Spirit Healers in the zone.

• Two additional Spirit Healers will be present during the Battle for Ashenvale in the northwest of the zone.

Dec. 21 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

• Druid
  • Lacerate base cost reduced 10 Rage (was 15).
  • Mangle (Bear) base cost reduced to 15 Rage (was 20).
• Priest
  • Shadow Word: Death base damage increased by 103 percent and the bonus damage it receives from spell power has been increased by 50 percent.
• Shaman
  • Shamanistic Rage now always grants six percent of the caster’s spell damage as mana, as intended.

Dec. 19 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

• Mage
  • Living Flame now benefits from and consumes Arcane Blast.
• Paladin
  • Avenger’s Shield’s movement slow is now properly considered a Snare and can be removed by effects that remove movement-impairing effects.
  • Mana granted by Seal of Martydom to party and raid members has been increased. Seal of Martyrdom now grants all party and raid members 20 percent of damage the Paladin takes from the seal (was 10 percent).
• Rogue
  • Blade Dance has been updated to grant 10 percent parry at all ranks, rather than increasing parry chance per combo point. The only effect of more combo points is now increased duration.
• Shaman
  • Mana granted by Shamanistic Rage to party and raid members has been increased. Shamanistic Rage now grants party and raid members 20 percent of the mana gained by the Shaman (was 10 percent).

Dec. 18 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

• The Battle for Ashenvale will now progress about 50 percent faster than before.
• The reputation gain for participating in killing an enemy Keeper of the Grove or Blade Master has been increased to 400 (was 200).
• Fixed an issue that caused the Shadowy Figure in Alterac Mountains to not be seen by players who should otherwise be able to see them.

Dec. 14 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

For a third day in a row, Blizzard added another hotfix to WoW Classic Season of Discovery on Dec. 14. This one tweaked a few abilities for some classes, and like previous ones, updated Battle of Ashenvale.

• Healing Rain will no longer interrupt the auto-attack swing timer of the casting Shaman every time it heals.
• Living Flame will now cease to spread and deal damage if the Mage caster no longer has the rune equipped.
• Regeneration and Mass Regeneration will now properly consume Arcane Blast when they benefit from it, regardless of the Mage’s healing targets.
• Mage Temporal Beacon will now also heal based on damage done by Arcane wands.
• The radius of healing for Mass Regeneration has been increased to 30 yards (was 15 yards).
• Battle for Ashenvale
  • The Priestess of the Moon Felore Moonray and Far Seer Kazragore are now spawned in Ashenvale while the Battle for Ashenvale is inactive, and are available to turn in quest items. Felore Moonray can be found in the inn in Astranaar, and Kazragore can be found in the inn in Splintertree Post. During the battle, they will move to their respective battlefield positions.
  • [With realm restarts] Fixed an issue where progress for the Battle for Ashenvale could be reset repeatedly by battles ending at different times on different layers.

Dec. 13 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

Another set of tweaks arrived in the game on Dec. 13. This time around, it focused on Hunter’s abilities, while also continuing to add changes to the Blackfathoom Deeps.

• Hunter
  • Hunter pet attack values have been updated to better scale with Hunter attack power.
    • Developers’ notes: “Pets that cast spells such as scorpid poison or Lightning Breath were scaling too well and pets using physical abilities were scaling too little. We’ve now normalized the amount of attack power gained, to scale with the focus cost of individual pet abilities. This means that abilities with a higher focus cost, that are cast less often, will receive more benefit from attack power per attack than abilities with a lower focus cost that can generally be used more often. Overall this should level out the damage and reduce situations where some abilities were scaling too much or too little with hunter attack power.”
  • Scorpid poison now distributes the additional damage it gains from attack power evenly over each stack of Scorpid Poison on the target.
    • Developers’ notes: “Previously, Scorpid poison received most of its benefit from the Hunter’s attack power in the very first stack. Now the additional damage gained from the controlling hunter will not be gained until the full 5 stacks of poison are on the target. This increases the ramp time a bit and makes it less immediately deadly in PvP.”
  • Pets now receive a smaller portion of a hunter’s armor and stamina.
    • Developers’ notes: “Hunter pets were gaining far too much durability from hunter stats, to the point where some pets could get more than double the health and armor of a well-geared level 25 player. We still want dedicated hunters to have the ability to tank certain dungeon and raid encounters, but pets shouldn’t be so effective that they become the objectively correct choice.”
  • Aspect of the Lion has been redesigned and will now function as an Aura.
    • Developers’ notes: “This means that it is possible to have Aspect of the Lion up in addition to another aspect, such as Aspect of the Hawk. As an offset to the lower amount of damage that some hunter pets will deal, and to make talents such as Improved Aspect of the Hawk more attractive to Hunters using Aspect of the Lion, we’re shifting Aspect of the Lion into an aura rather than an aspect. This change will go into effect with scheduled weekly maintenance tomorrow, but the tooltip will not yet change. In a later hotfix, we’ll rename relocalize Aspect of the Lion to “Heart of the Lion” and update the tooltip.”
• Blackfathom Deeps
  • Elemental Resistances lowered in Blackfathom Deeps to levels more appropriate for a level 25 Raid.
    • Gelihast Shadow Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Lorgus Jett Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Twilight Lord Kelris Shadow and Arcane Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
      • Phantasmal Priestess all Resist lowered to zero (was 75), so it’s no longer bad news if double casters are sent down to the dream in phase one.
    • Invading Nightmare Shadow and Fire Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Void Elementals Shadow Resist lowered lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Corrosive Droplets Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75), and Frost Resist lowered to zero (was 25).

Dec. 12 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

The Dec. 12 patch was arguably the biggest one up to date. Developers decided to tweak a few classes, bringing buffs to Druids and Priests, just to name a few. At the same time, they updated the Blackfathom Deeps 10-man raid. You can find all the changes below.

• Druid
  • Starsurge rune ability damage increased 182 percent.
  • Starsurge cooldown reduced to six seconds (was 10 seconds).
  • Starsurge mana cost reduced to one percent of base mana (was three percent of base mana).
• Hunter
  • Flanking Strike now gains the benefit of weapon enhancements like sharpening stones, is now on global cooldown, and is now properly treated as a melee attack, letting it benefit from attack power and combat modifiers to dodge, parry, block, crit, hit, etc.
  • Flanking Strike is now prevented by Pacify.
  • Flanking Strike now requires a weapon equipped.
  • Flanking Strike pet damage is now properly treated as a melee attack, with same benefits as listed above for the hunter’s damage.
  • Hunter pet attack values have been updated to better scale with Hunter attack power.
    • Developers’ notes: “Pets that cast spells such as scorpid poison or Lightning Breath were scaling too well and pets using physical abilities were scaling too little. We’ve now normalized the amount of attack power gained, to scale with the focus cost of individual pet abilities. This means that abilities with a higher focus cost, that are cast less often, will receive more benefit from attack power per attack than abilities with a lower focus cost that can generally be used more often. Overall this should level out the damage and reduce situations where some abilities were scaling too much or too little with hunter attack power.”
  • Scorpid poison now distributes the additional damage it gains from attack power evenly over each stack of Scorpid Poison on the target.
    • Developers’ notes: “Previously, Scorpid poison received most of its benefit from the Hunter’s attack power in the very first stack. Now the additional damage gained from the controlling hunter will not be gained until the full five stacks of poison are on the target. This increases the ramp time a bit and makes it less immediately deadly in PvP.
  • Pets now receive a smaller portion of a hunter’s armor and stamina.”
    • Developers’ notes: “Hunter pets were gaining far too much durability from hunter stats, to the point where some pets could get more than double the health and armor of a well-geared level 25 player. We still want dedicated hunters to have the ability to tank certain dungeon and raid encounters, but pets shouldn’t be so effective that they become the objectively correct choice.”
  • Aspect of the Lion has been redesigned and will now function as an Aura.
    • Developers’ notes: “This means that it is possible to have Aspect of the Lion up in addition to another aspect, such as Aspect of the Hawk. As an offset to the lower amount of damage that some hunter pets will deal, and to make talents such as Improved Aspect of the Hawk more attractive to Hunters using Aspect of the Lion, we’re shifting Aspect of the Lion into an aura rather than an aspect. This change will go into effect with scheduled weekly maintenance tomorrow, but the tooltip will not yet change. In a later hotfix, we’ll rename relocalize Aspect of the Lion to “Heart of the Lion” and update the tooltip.”
• Priest
  • Priest Homunculi damage increased by 100 percent.
  • Void Plague damage increased by 200 percent.
  • Twisted Faith now increases damage done by Mind Blast and Mind Flay by 50 percent (was 20 percent) on targets afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Rogue
  • Saber Slash, Shiv, and Main Gauche will now properly consume Remorseless Attacks.
  • Saber Slash’s tooltip fixed; damage not reduced.
  • Saber Slash damage is now properly considered a Bleed and benefits from the Mangle debuff. Note: Bleed-immune creatures will no longer be affected by it.
• Shaman
  • Lava Lash damage increased to 150 percent weapon damage (was 100 percent weapon damage).
  • Lava Lash mana cost reduced to one percent of base mana (was four percent).
  • Overload now has a 50 percent chance to trigger (was 33 percent).
  • Dual Wield Specialization now grants 10 percent increased chance to hit while dual-wielding.
• Boon of Blackfathom world buff adjusted. It now provides three percent spell hit and 25 spell power buff addition to the other physical damage and movement speed effects (was spell crit).
  • Developers’ notes: “Spellcasters in general are struggling a bit in BFD, mostly due to poor scaling without spellpower and a higher requirement of spell hit to reliably hit creatures 2+ levels above the caster. Keep those Chronoboons handy and don’t stand in the fire and lose your buff!”
• Blackfathom Deeps
  • Elemental Resistances lowered in Blackfathom Deeps to levels more appropriate for a level 25 Raid.
    • Gelihast Shadow Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Lorgus Jett Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Twilight Lord Kelris Shadow and Arcane Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
      • Phantasmal Priestess all Resist lowered to 0 (was 75), so it’s no longer bad news if double casters are sent down to the dream in phase one.
    • Invading Nightmare Shadow and Fire Resist lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Void Elementals Shadow Resist lowered lowered to 25 (was 75).
    • Corrosive Droplets Nature Resist lowered to 25 (was 75), and Frost Resist lowered to 0 (was 25).

Dec. 7 WoW Classic SoD patch notes

The Dec. 7 hotfix focused on shipping some changes to the Battle of Ashenvale PvP event, which is one of the major features in WoW Classic Season of Discovery.

• Ashenvale PvP
  • When a player makes any hostile action against an opposing faction Lieutenant (e.g. Keepers of the Grove, Blademasters) or faction leader in the various objective areas, they will receive reputation when that enemy dies.
    • It must be an offensive action (harmful spell, harmful ability, melee attack, or ranged attack) against an enemy to receive reputation.
    • Players will receive reputation even if they are dead or no longer nearby as long as they are still in the zone when the enemy dies.
  • Players now receive 200 reputation for killing a Lieutenant and all members of the winning faction will receive 200 reputation when the faction leader dies.
  • The winning team will also receive 100 reputation per friendly Lieutenant remaining.
  • Players now have 60 minutes to complete the Ashenvale PvP event (was 30 minutes).
• The Trainee’s Sentinel Nightsaber and Trainee’s Outrider Wolf now require Friendly reputation with the Silverwing Sentinels and Warsong Outriders respectively (was Honored).