World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is still fast approaching, despite the distance being a bit farther away than we had hoped. Blizzard announced that the release date would be delayed yesterday, while also announcing the October 13th launch of prepatch.
At this moment, all we can do is speculate on when the Shadowlands expansion will release, but we can say one thing for certain: Blizzard is using the extra time they’ve taken to make sure the expansion has the proper polish.
Jumping right into it, the last two builds for the Beta saw a huge number of changes to endgame dungeons. One of the most dominant is the change to the Mythic+ affix, Grievous Wound.
Grievous Wound provides a stacking Damage-Over-Time effect that can easily wipe groups, remaining until the player is healed to a certain percentage of max health. With the nerf, the affix has had its damage cut by 50%.
There are many more changes as well. For De Other Side’s part, there have been a number of nerfs, such as the Son of Hakkar’s Blood Nova having its damage halved. The Son of Hakkar’s Spilled Essence pools will only last half as long as well.
Mists of Tirna Scithe has a single change that isn’t quite a buff or a nerf, though it might lean closer to the latter. Ingra Maloch’s Embrace Darkness will now drastically reduce his damage taken rather than reflecting the damage.
Necrotic Wake has a handful of changes to the bosses, though Stitchflesh has been hit three times. Stitchneedle has had its initial and periodic damage reduced by 25%, and the movement speed reduction against it for Morbid Fixation has been increased to 60%.
The Sanguine Depths has had a few interesting changes, such as the Venthyr Covenant buff Sinfall Boon now having the damage bonus per stack increased to 5% rather than 4%. Kyrxis the Voracious’ Severing Smash has had its damage reduced by a third as well.
In the Spires of Aszcension, Kin-Tara and Ventunax have both been made less deadly. Kin-Tara’s Charged Speer has had its initial damage reduced significantly, while Ventunax’s Dark Stride has had its periodic damage reduced by 27.3%.
The Theatre of Pain has also seen a massive number of changes, dominantly nerfs, but these were extensive enough that we’ve given the changes their own piece, which you can read about here. The changes listed are by no means an exhaustive list, as Blizzard has been hard at work making sure that the dungeons are as closed to balance as any content in World of Warcraft is ever able to be.
