Blizzard has kept a continuous stream of content coming to the alpha builds of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the swiftly approaching expansion to World of Warcraft. As they work to keep the content for Battle for Azeroth engaging and interesting, they’re still keeping a strong eye on the alpha builds.
The developers have shown recently that they’re listening to their player base, which many players had thought the developers had forsaken doing quite some time ago. With the developers constantly seeking and applying fan feedback, the builds have had some issues addressed rapidly.
We recently discussed the new changes that have come to the Death Knight, Hunter, and Monk classes for the alpha. The newest build is adding Anima powers to the classes, allowing players to see what’s going to be coming in the expansion.
But with what’s already been added to the builds, Blizzard made sure to pay attention and address issues. This latest build involves a few corrections to the Shadowlands alpha, including tweaking some unnecessarily powerful skills.
The Shaman class took a bit of a hit to knock down a few of their more powerful abilities, as well as changing a good number of names. For example, Elemental Resistance and Elemental Preservation have been renamed to Shield of Spirits and Untaintable Waters, respectively.
Another name change is Energetic Totems, which has now been titled Deathseer Choker and been drastically nerfed. The ability will now cause each active totem to increase damage and healing by 20%, rather than the previous 40%.
Draining Hex has been renamed to Leeching Lilypad and received a powerful nerf as well. Originally damaging the target by 2% of maximum health every 2 seconds and healing the Shaman for that same amount, it now will damage the target for a flat amount of Shadow damage instead.
Many other classes have experienced tweaks with this latest build, though the Shaman changes are arguably the most notable. The following changes are a small sampling of the huge number of alterations Blizzard has made:
- Warriors have had their Anima Powers split into six “Singing Stone” abilities, each of which drastically increases the length of a specific shout.
- Paladins have had their Blessing of Summer Anima Power nerfed heavily, now causing allies to deal 25% of spell power in holy damage rather than the previous 100%.
- Mages lost some damage to their Fire Juggler anime power, with Fire Blast now simply launching an enemy into the air rather than knocking them upwards in a damaging pillar of flame.
As the builds continue to develop and release, we’ll be seeing more changes at a rapid pace. Alpha testers have done a fantastic job of helping Blizzard polish and hone the content already released!
