- Author: Passion
- Date: June 21, 2023
- Updated: June 21, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
With this weeks reset, the Phase 3 patch has reached live servers. This patch adds many notable additions. The primary focus is Trial of the Crusader, and Trial of the Grand Crusader, “new” raid content for Wrath Classic. Additionally, Onyxia has been upgraded from its level 60 version to a 10 and 25-man level 80 version. This version offers re-statted Tier 2 Helmets for all classes, including Death Knights, as well as the Reins of the Onyxian Drake, allowing players to ride the classic raid boss.
Trial of the Crusader offers a toggle between Normal and Heroic Modes for the first time, instead of optional Hard Mode on a per-boss basis. Heroic offers the same or similar gear at a higher item level. This can be toggled on a per-boss basis, allowing players to swap back and forth depending on the boss.
The Vault of Archavon has also been updated with a new boss, Koralon the Flame Watcher. On 25-man this boss offers item level 245 Tier 9 gear, as well as Relentless Gladiator items. On 10-man, he will drop item level 232 Tier 9 gear, alongside Furious Gladiator items.
Titan Rune Dungeons have also been upgraded, offering Defense Protocol Beta. This difficulty is activated the same way as Defense Protocol Alpha, choosing your difficulty on activation. Defense Protocol Beta, or Heroic++, drops items from 10-man Ulduar. The final bosses in each dungeon drop a currency called “Sidereal Essence”. This can be traded in Dalaran for items from 10-man Ulduar Hard Modes. The Looking for Group tool has also been updated for Heroic+ and Heroic++ dungeons.
The new battleground Isle of Conquest is now available. This is a 40v40 siege-style battleground, allowing players to use the many vehicles of Wrath of the Lich King to breach the enemies keep.
Ulduar shortcuts have been implemented. Players are able to skip the entire first section, up to and including XT-002 Deconstructor, using the portal systems. Vezax will be available after defeating Kologarn. Yogg-Saron now has guaranteed Fragments of Val’anyr drops based on difficulty. Zero lights will always give 3 fragments, 1 light will always give 2, and any other difficulty will drop 1 guaranteed fragment. Algalon will also always drop 2 fragments.
The Omen of Clarity changes we recently received have been reverted, instead being replaced with the new Glyph of Omen of Clarity. Warriors have also received the new Glyph of Shattering Throw, causing Shattering Throw to be instant and usable in any stance, but no longer removing invulnerabilities or being usable in PvP.
Last but not least, a large list of bug fixes have been implemented. Some highlights being a final nail in the coffin for Snakeweaving and DoT munching being fixed. For the full list of changes, see below.
Wrath Classic Patch Notes
Version 3.4.2
21 June 2023
New Raid: Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader
- This content becomes available on Thursday, June 22 at 23:59 CEST.
- Challenge the five boss encounters in the Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 and 25-player raids on Normal and Heroic difficulty.
- Trial of the Crusader (Normal difficulty) shares a lockout with Trial of the Grand Crusader (Heroic difficulty), but you may dynamically swap from Normal to Heroic and back again within the same raid size.
- For example, if your raid group clears the raid up through Faction Champions on Heroic difficulty, you may swap to Normal difficulty and complete the instance on Normal.
- You may also do this difficulty swapping on a per-boss basis. Using the example above, you may clear up through Faction Champions on Heroic, then swap to Normal for the Twin Valkyr encounter, and then swap back to Heroic for the Anub’arak encounter.
- Please note that to be eligible for Tribute to Insanity and the additional tribute chest and rewards, you must do the entire Trial of the Grand Crusader raid on Heroic difficulty in that same lockout.
- 10-player and 25-player versions of the raid are still separate lockouts and do not impact one another at all.
- The requirement to have cleared Trial of the Crusader before attempting Trial of the Grand Crusader has been removed.
- Adjustments have been made to the acquisition rate of both Emblems of Triumph and Trophy of the Crusade in Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader:
- 1 additional Trophy of the Crusade will now drop from each boss in 25-player raids.
- The number of Emblems of Triumph obtained from each boss in 25-player raids increased by 2.
- The number of Emblems of Triumph obtained from each boss in 10-player raids increased by 1.
- Developers’ note: With Normal and Heroic versions of the Trial of the Crusader sharing a lockout in Wrath Classic, the total number of Trophies of the Crusade and Emblems of Triumph available each week decreased. These adjustments are meant to bring the acquisition rate of both resources on par to what it would have been in original Wrath of the Lich King. The number of emblems dropped was not increased to perfectly match what was possible to obtain from the raid on a weekly basis in 2009, as there are now other opportunities outside the raid to obtain these emblems, namely from the daily heroic satchel when the daily heroic dungeon is completed on Defense Protocol Beta difficulty.
Level 80 Onyxia’s Lair
- This content becomes available on Thursday, June 22 at 23:59 CEST
- The Onyxia’s Lair encounter has been updated to level 80.
- The level 60 version of Onyxia’s Lair can be accessed by speaking to Zidormi near the Onyxia’s Lair summoning stone. Speak with Zidormi again to return to the level 80 version of the raid.
New Boss in the Vault of Archavon
- Koralon the Flame Watcher becomes available after weekly updates/maintenance the week of June 28.
The content below becomes available with the content update/maintenance the week of June 21.
Argent Tournament
- Join the Argent Tournament in the new quest hub located north of Sindragosa’s Fall in the Icecrown zone. You’ll undertake new quests and daily quests while showing off your jousting prowess to earn new rewards.
Titan Rune Dungeons – Defense Protocol Beta
- Titan Rune Dungeons now have a new difficulty – Defense Protocol Beta.
- To initiate Defense Protocol Beta, the party will need to interact with the Mysterious Device at the entrance of a heroic dungeon, select the Defense Protocol Beta option from the gossip text. All five members of the party will need to channel on the object until the cast bar completes, and then Defense Protocol Beta will become active.
- Once activated, the enemies and bosses in the dungeon will have a variety of dangerous new effects alongside increased health and damage.
- Defense Protocol Beta boss encounters drop items from the 10-player Normal Mode of Ulduar.
- The final boss of each Defense Protocol Beta dungeon gives a new currency, Sidereal Essence. Exchange Sidereal Essence at the Animated Constellation npc in your faction’s area of Dalaran for rewards from 10-player Hard Mode Ulduar.
Player versus Player
- Prepare to take on all challengers when the new Wrath of the Lich King PvP Season 7 begins.
- The new Isle of Conquest battleground becomes available, pitting players against each other in 40 vs. 40 epic battles.
Ulduar
- The portal to the Antechamber is now always active even if Flame Leviathan and XT-002 Deconstructor have not been defeated.
- After Kologarn is defeated, General Vezax and all the surrounding enemies in his encounter area will now immediately spawn.
- Yogg-Saron now drops additional Fragments of Val’anyr depending on how many Titan Keepers are assisting your raid:
- With zero Keepers assisting, Yogg-Saron will now always drop 3 Fragments of Val’anyr.
- With one Keeper assisting, Yogg-Saron will now always drop 2 Fragments of Val’anyr.
- With two or more Keepers assisting, Yogg-Saron will still drop 1 Fragment of Val’anyr as before.
- Algalon the Observer now always drops 2 Fragments of Val’anyr.
- The one-hour timer for defeating Algalon the Observer has been removed.
- With the release of Trial of the Crusader, Ulduar item drops will be adjusted:
- Ulduar 10 Normal Mode items now drop from Defense Protocol Beta bosses in Titan Rune Dungeons
- Ulduar 25 Normal Mode items now drop from Ulduar 10.
- Ulduar 10 Hard Mode items still drop from Ulduar 10 Hard Modes.
- Ulduar 25 Hard Mode items still only drop from Ulduar 25 Hard Modes.
Classes
- Druid
- Previous adjustments, specifically to Faerie Fire (Feral) and Omen of Clarity procs, have been reverted. This implementation has been replaced with a new Glyph of Omen of Clarity major glyph which grants the same effect, causing Faerie Fire (Feral) to always proc Omen of Clarity.
- Developers’ note: This is going to be an extremely small loss in damage for the druid for replacing an existing glyph, but the previous adjustments resulted in a larger than intended damage increase for Feral DPS, so this helps to retain the benefits of that adjustment but does so at the cost of a Major Glyph slot instead.
- Warrior
- A new minor glyph has been added to the game: Glyph of Shattering Throw – Your Shattering Throw is now instant and may be used in any stance, but no longer removes invulnerabilities and cannot be used on players or player-controlled targets.
- Developers’ note: This glyph is being added to smooth out the usage of one of the clunkier raid utility cooldowns in Wrath Classic. The usage of Shattering Throw was often a strict DPS loss for Warriors as you would need to change stances and lose your pooled rage, and using it had a cast time which left the warrior immobile and vulnerable. The usage of this raid cooldown should now feel significantly more natural without most of the drawbacks and should not impact the usage of Shattering Throw in PvP at all.
Items and Rewards
- The Sons of Hodir have upped their fashion game and there is now a Sons of Hodir tabard available from Lillehoff in Dun Niffelem, Storm Peaks.
- A new vendor has been added in Dalaran: Animated Constellation. This vendor will exchange items from Ulduar 10-player Hard Mode for the new Sidereal Essence currency earned from Defense Protocol Beta dungeons.
User Interface
- The Looking for Group tool has been updated for a smoother experience with Titan Rune Dungeons
- The menu/setting UI has been updated
Bug Fixes
- Classes
- Death Knight
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused runes to not properly be consumed when certain abilities were used together in a macro.
- Fixed several issues with the Death Knight talent Dancing Rune Weapon that caused the damage to be calculated incorrectly.
- Resolved an issue causing the version of Death Coil cast by Dancing Rune Weapon to do base damage and inherit no stats from the Death Knight.
- Resolved an issue where Dancing Rune Weapon was not mimicking the Slow Effect of Chains of Ice.
- Resolved an issue preventing the correct version of Death Knight abilities to be used by Dancing Rune Weapon.
- Resolved an issue causing the melee damage done by Dancing Rune Weapon to be incorrect. The damage done will now be much closer to 50% of the Death Knight’s damage, with some variation due to exact gear configurations such as equipped weapon speed.
- Glyph of Death Strike now properly increases the damage of Dancing Rune Weapon’s Death Strike.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now correctly inherits the weapon damage of the wielder for special attacks.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now gains a benefit from the Improved Icy Touch talent.
- Developers’ note: These fixes should bring the damage output of Dancing Rune Weapon much closer to the indicated 50% damage on the tooltip. Please note that while Dancing Rune Weapon should be dealing closer to 50% of your total damage, there are certain secondary stats such as Armor Penetration that are not inherited by Pets which can impact this. This behavior is systemic to all pets, and intended.
- Fixed an audio issue that sometimes caused a crackling sound effect to sometimes occur when near Death Knight players.
- Mage
- Fixed an issue that caused a mage’s Mirror Images to retain threat on an enemy target if the mage previously died while fighting that same target.
- Fixed several animation issues with Blizzard spell effects.
- Fixed an issue that caused Frostfire Bolt to always remove the Fireball! debuff when used with the mage Tier 8 4-piece set bonus.
- Fixed an issue with Blink that would sometimes cause a disconnect when used while walking on water.
- Fixed an issue that caused the absorb shield from Sacred Shield to not be transferred to the mage when it was removed using Spellsteal.
- Paladin
- Fixed an issue that occasionally caused Hand of Sacrifice to fall off of a friendly target early.
- Fixed an issue that caused certain ranks of Greater Blessing of Might to not properly be logged.
- Priest
- Fixed several issues with Shadowfiend that caused it to break certain crowd control when summoned and place players into combat even when not being actively engaged in combat with an enemy player or creature.
- Fixed a visual issue with the spell effect that appears over the head of targets affected by Mind Control.
- Rogue
- Fixed an issue with the Overkill talent that prevented rogues from appropriately gaining damage immunity the moment that vanish is used.
- Fixed an issue that caused multiple ranks of Wound Poison to place multiple separate debuffs on the enemy target.
- Fixed an issue that allowed rogues to get free combo points before an encounter begins utilizing Honor Among Thieves and spec swapping.
- Fixed an issue causing rogues using Slice and Dice on a target affected by Vigilance to be removed from stealth.
- Resolved an issue that caused Feint to incorrectly proc poisons on the rogue’s target.
- Shaman
- Fixed an issue with the Earthen Power talent tooltip that incorrectly states that it dispels all snare effects rather than one effect per tick per friendly target.
- Developers’ note: This has always behaved this way and has always been intended to behave this way but the tooltip was misleading. We’ve corrected the tooltip to be more clear about what the talent actually does.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Earthgrab talent to not have PvP diminishing returns.
- Warlock
- Unstable affliction is now properly affected by Resilience.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Warlock quest “The Binding” to be difficult to complete due to the Summoned Incubus being quickly engaged and killed by Orgrimmar guards.
- Fixed a visual issue with the Rain of Fire spell.
- Warrior
- Fixed an issue that caused Intervene to incorrectly check for line of sight on the enemy target when used in a macro.
- Death Knight
- Arena, Battlegrounds, and PvP
- Fixed a spot in the Ruins of Lordaeron arena that pets could not path to.
- Fixed a safe spot in the Dalaran Sewers Arena that could be reached by Slowfall effects.
- Fixed an issue where you could interrupt enemy players drinking in Arena by manipulating their threat table by Hand of Salvation and other means.
- Meta gems are no longer swappable in combat or in Arena matches.
- Resilience now properly reduces the effectiveness of mana-drains.
- The water in the Wintergrasp instanced battleground has been restored.
- Fixed an issue that allowed Reanimated Abominations from the quest “That’s Abominable” to be able to enter Arena Matches.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to spam buffs on friendly pets to remain in combat indefinitely.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused player pets to become stuck in the starting area of the Dalaran Sewers Arena map.
- Fixed an issue that caused knockbacks such as Thunderstorm to not affect player pets.
- Raids and Dungeons
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused XT-002 Deconstructor to not drop loot.
- Resolved an issue that sometimes caused Noth the Plaguebringer to not drop loot.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to bring the Berserking debuff from Battlegrounds outside of the Battleground instance.
- Fixed an issue that allowed the “Pumped Up!” buff gained from /cheering at The Tauren Chieftains to be taken into raid instances.
- Fixed an issue that caused healing threat to not properly split between multiple hostile enemies.
- Fixed an issue with the Titan Rune Dungeon Troll ability Blood of the Loa to incorrectly heal enemies too much per tick.
- Fixed an issue that occasionally caused a disconnect when swapping seats from a Gunner to Driver in a Siege Engine in Ulduar.
- Resolved an issue that caused portions of the minimap in Drak’Tharon keep to show as grey and untextured.
- Fixed an issue with the Hodir’s Fury visual effect on Flame Leviathan that causes the impact visual to persist after the spell fires off.
- User Interface
- Fixed an issuet that caused Target of Target frames to not show debuffs.
- Fixed an issue that caused you to sometime lose your target when moving away from it.
- Fixed an issue that caused some players vendor buyback slots to rarely not properly clear after relogging.
- Fixed several issues with the Recommended Graphics settings causing incorrect aspect ratios and resolutions.
- Fixed an erroneous interaction that caused the Equipment Manager to sometimes not properly equip or unequip certain items when a quiver is equipped one of the first three bag slots.
- Restored the missing raid size indicator to the instance difficulty flag attached to the minimap while in a raid instance.
- Fixed a display issue causing the expertise rating calculations to round up or down to the nearest quarter of a percent on the character sheet.
- Fixed an interface issue preventing debuff icons from showing on the pet frame.
- Fixed an issue with the Looking for Group tool that prevented your listing from updating when adding or removing an activity.
- Fixed an issue that caused roles not to display on default raid frames.
- Fixed an issue that caused player pet’s health bars to show as black in the default raid frames after the pet dies and is resurrected.
- General
- Fixed an issue that caused the Children’s Week “Home Alone” achievement to not be able to be earned with a Hearthstone replacement item such as the Dark Portal.
- Fixed an issue that caused On Next Hit melee abilities from disabling the spell queue.
- Fixed an issue with the Mystical Pauldron of Elements and Mystical Vest of Elements not granting their mp5 bonuses.
- Fixed an issue that caused companion pets to trigger certain trinkets and effects.
- Developers’ note: RIP Snakeweaving.
- Fixed an issue that caused stacking damage over time effects to not properly stack when two effects that increase the magnitude of the DoT land simultaneously.
- Developers’ note: This resolves the so-called “DoT Munching” behavior seen predominately with spells like Ignite and Deep Wounds.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused different daily dungeon quests to show up on different layers on the same realm.
- Fixed an issue that caused players to sometimes become dismounted when flying between Borean Tundra and Sholazar Basin.
- Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to loot the final Spotted Hippogryph Down for the quest “Hasty Preparations”.
- Fixed an issue that caused certain auras not to fade when the player no longer meets the requirements for that aura to be active.
- Developers’ note: A good example of this behavior is Shield Wall. Prior to this fix players could equip a one-hand weapon and shield and pop Shield Wall, then unequip the shield and keep the effect. This is no longer possible after this fix.