Greetings,
The WoW Classic team wanted to give a quick update on the status of Phase 7 PTR testing and give you an idea of some changes we have planned for Naxxramas, as well as some clarifications on adjustments we are planning for the Sanctified gear system coming in Phase 7.
Naxxramas Testing
First off, we want to confirm that we do plan to do another round of Naxxramas PTR testing. We are targeting mid-next week (around Jan 29th) to open the raid again, likely letting it stay up through the weekend of Jan 31. It’s possible we may need to change our testing plans, we hope to lock in the exact dates for this test period very soon and let everyone know here when things are finalized.
The primary focus of this next test is to review some changes we plan to make to the Military Quarter, which include, but likely aren’t limited to, the following:
- We’ll be adding a mechanism to the Instructor Razuvious encounter that makes it a bit friendlier to raid groups that don’t have multiple priests.
- We’ll be adjusting the Four Horsemen encounter mechanics to be friendlier to smaller groups or groups with fewer than 4 (or 8!) tanks.
- We plan to fix a bug with the “orders” mechanic in the Military Quarter that was causing it to affect more than 3 players per raid group at a time.
- We additionally plan to add additional direct benefits for successfully completing the Military Wing mechanic when it occurs.
Sanctified Gear
We’ve iterated on the Sanctified Gear system based on our internal observations and the excellent feedback provided by players. Here’s a look at what we are changing:
- We are capping the number of pieces of Sanctified Gear that will contribute to the power bonuses to 8 pieces (was 12).
- We felt that this would allow more build diversity and encourage you to mix and match additional set pieces and not worry about losing out on the massive power you’d gain from those 4 additional pieces.
- The power gained per piece of Sanctified armor has been increased to compensate for the adjustment above.
- The Seal of the Dawn trinket line that provides the bonus inside of Naxxramas, will now also count as a Sanctified item.
- The Undead Slaying sets will now provide a bonus of +2 to your current Sanctified (down from 3) for wearing the set.
This means if you wore 3 pieces of the Undead Slaying set and your Trinket, that takes care of 6/8 of your Sanctified items.
Seal of the Dawn Progression Clarifications
We also want to provide some clarity on the upgrades for the Seal of the Dawn Trinket line and alleviate some of the concerns we’re hearing when it comes to grinding and alts. So below is an explanation of the system.
- Killing bosses inside of Naxxramas will drop Remnants of Valor, which can be looted by every player in the raid and are used to upgrade the trinket.
- It takes more Remnants of Valor to upgrade the trinket each rank.
- E.g. it takes more to go from rank 9 to 10 than from rank 4 to 5.
- Bosses killed on higher difficulties provide more Remnants of Valor.
- There is a quest outside of Naxxramas that can be done repeatedly with no limit on it to gain Remnants of Valor.
- This quest will will provide a small number of Remnants of Valor but will increase the amount it gives every few weeks, allowing players to catch up faster if they miss weeks or start late.
- The Trinket Upgrades are gated, and you cannot progress past a certain rank of the trinket until a certain week has passed.
- E.g. you can farm 1,000 Remnants of Valor, but you can only spend 450 (example number) of them and upgrade your trinket from Rank 1 to Rank 2 and cannot upgrade the Trinket again until Week 2 (example week, final cadence is TBD) of Naxxramas has passed.
- This cap on the Trinket is global and not personalized for that character. So if you are an alt or player that comes into Naxxramas near the end of the phase – if the global Trinket Rank cap is Rank 9 - you can work on the repeatable quest (with its increased rate of Remnants at that point in time) and go all the way from Rank 1 to Rank 9 in a single week.
- Remnants of Valor are Bind on Account and can be traded to your alt characters.
- If you find yourself with more Remnants of Valor than you need on your main and have already capped your trinket for that week, you can send them to your alts.
We’ll update these forums with update notes that have a bit more specific information around the nature of the changes next week when Naxxramas re-opens on the PTR. Thank you again for the testing and feedback so far!