The War Within Season 2 dungeon testing begins on PTR realms this week. The test period will begin on Tuesday January 7th at 10:00 PDT (13:00 EDT, 20:00 CEST), and end Tuesday January 14th at 10:00 PDT (13:00 EDT, 20:00 CEST). Please note that the test period may be adjusted in the event of technical difficulties.
For season 2 of The War Within, we are refining our testing format to better concentrate feedback and facilitate larger content and balance updates between each PTR cycle. Alongside the daily rotation of affixes for +2 to +12 key levels, each week will spotlight a subset of Season 2 dungeons for focused testing.
Week 1: Operation: Floodgate
Week 2: The War Within Dungeons (Cinderbrew Meadery, Darkflame Cleft, Priory of the Sacred Flame, Rookery)
Week 3: Legacy dungeons (Operation Mechagon: Workshop, THE MOTHERLODE!!!, Theater of Pain)
Week 4: The War Within dungeons + Operation: Floodgate
Week 5: Legacy dungeons + Operation: Floodgate
Week 6+: All season 2 dungeons
Affix updates
We have a number of adjustments to affixes and supporting systems available for testing. Affixes will cycle each day on PTR realms to facilitate testing.
Unified creature buffs on all Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes with Xal’atath’s Gift, increasing damage done up to 50% and reducing damage taken up to 100% for 20 seconds on all nearby creatures in combat.
New affix: Xal’atath’s Bargain: Pulsar
While in combat, Xal’atath summons pulsars that orbit players and must be intercepted within a time limit.
This affix replaces Xal’atath’s Bargain: Oblivion
Xal’atath’s Guile
Redesigned. Now causes keystones above level 12 to increase health and damage of enemies by 12% per level instead of 10% per level.
Xal’atath’s Bargain: Voidbound
Dark Prayer is no longer a channel and the Void Emissary no longer grants damage reduction to creatures while active.
Dark Prayer now has a 15 seconds cast time, and grants all nearby creatures in combat Xal’atath’s Gift when it finishes casting.
The Potency of Xal’atath’s Gift granted by Dark Prayer is based on the remaining shield percentage of the Void Emissary.
New Achievement and Rewards
Keystone Legend
Attaining a rating of 2850 Lindormi will offer players a quest that prevents keystones level 12 and above from being reduced below level 12 for the remainder of the season.
Players can still speak with Lindormi to lower their keystone level.
This functionality includes keystone level decay from the great vault.
During the test period you’ll be able to acquire and customize Mythic Keystones by talking to the Keystone Vendor in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, and the nearby Dungeon Teleports NPC will assist you with transportation.
Completely agree. Depletion does not help the under 12 crowd, like at all. Those doing +12 and up can much more easily redo a key than those below 12. And I am still in favor of removing key depletion in its entirety.
Give us more rewards & loot on all keys that’s equivalent to the level it is required to ACTUALLY run that key level. How are you going to expect people to be 616 to run a certain key level to hand them champion gear from the chest at the end? Ridiculous! And again I say, you can get ~815g from a rinky dink world quest and only ~50g from a keystone chest? Also ridiculous!
Xalataths bargain seems to be bugged atm, ascendant is always buffing the mobs to take 100% reduced damage and do 50% increased damage weither the orbs are cced or just time out making it really hard to test anything.
#2 — add in a SOLO QUEUE that folks can just queue into selecting what keys/dungeons they wanna do and let group makers choose from a big pool of players. This allows those queued in players to be able to MOVE AROUND and do other stuff while they’re queued… how difficult is this request?!?
#3 — to the above, add a MINIMUM REQUIREMENT that queued characters must have completed & timed a previous key level in order to do the next — PER CHARACTER. So, if you do Priory +6, timed… then you can now queue in for a Priory +7 and not before. This will flood more players into the lower keys which is needed for a healthy M+ ecosystem. For those of you screaming about alts, do you want M+ to die!!! Cuz that’s what is happening rn. You need players to have the chance to grind up & push so that your mains can have competent people to group with.
#4 — for all that is holy, please INCREASE THE REWARDS & MONEY from the chests for both completed & timed keys with timed keys offering a bit more rewards but not too much that makes completing a dungeon worthless and you draw in the “key deserter” crowds. Because 50g from a +10 chest is RIDICULOUS!
If you do these 4 things, M+ will be on its way to being fixed — even if you leave the ridiculous overtuning of trash mobs AND specs being completely unviable in M+ in. Because those are things we can work around until you get around to fixing and balancing them. What we cannot work around is the 4 things I have listed!
I’ll beg for this until I’m blue in the face…
REMOVE KEY DEPLETION!
GIVE US A SOLO QUEUE THAT LETS PLAYERS SELECT WHICH KEYS THEY WANNA DO & LETS PARTY LEADERS WITH KEYS SELECT FROM THERE!
ALLOW CHARACTERS TO ONLY QUEUE FOR KEYS THEY HAVE TIMED THE PREVIOUS LEVEL OF (IDEALLY PER CHARACTER)!
INCREASE CHEST GEAR & MONEY REWARDS AS KEY LEVELS INCREASE FOR BOTH COMPLETION & SLIGHTLY MORE FOR TIMED.
Please fix this — so many of my guildies are not even logging in anymore it’s become so toxic and brutal without a perfect comp. Our M+ teams overall are suffering!