Phase 3 Preview | Season of Discovery | World of Warcraft

hi everyone I'm Clay Stone associate production  director of wild classic Welcome to our season  

of Discovery phase 3 preview as our team has  shared in the past we have been blown away by  

the reception to season of Discovery and we're  so excited to share this sneak peak at what's  

ahead with you so with that let's take a look at  what we'll be covering today we'll kick things  

off with raid information then a preview of Rune  abilities followed by our PVP updates changes  

and additions being made to world events a look  at what's coming to professions and close it out  

with a very important system update and more  which you're definitely going to want to stick  

around for all right so just like last time some  disclaimers we're going to put the build up on  

PTR soon to check our era and hardcore Realms  but like all the other phases phase three of  

season of Discovery will not have a PTR for player  testing still there will be some data mining that  

occurs in advance of the launch but as we've been  saying since the beginning of season of Discovery  

not everything Data mind will actually be in the  phase or future phases so speculators beware and  

conversely there's more to discover in this  upcoming phase and Beyond than we're going to  

talk about ahead of time and we want your feedback  everything we do across classic continues to be a  

journey that is co-written by you the players and  we can't wait to hear your thoughts on all of it  

all right so I'm sure it is a total surprise  that absolutely no one saw coming that the Temple  

of Atal'Hakkar aka the Sunken Temple will be our  new and first 20 player Level up raid this raid is  

jam-packed with eight bosses tons of new items  including new item sets new and revamped epic  

drops and uplevel and rebalanced Quest rewards  this is also when the level 50 class quests come  

online which will provide a wide array of powerful  items for each class jumping into a quick preview  

of a few of the bosses the first boss in this raid  is Atal'arion a massive Berserker troll that acts  

as a bit of a janitor cleaning up or potentially  eating any person or thing that happens to fall  

down from the atrium above If the fall doesn't  kill you this guy definitely will next up we  

have a brand new boss the festering rot slime this  engorged gelatinous monster inexorably patrols one  

of the outer rings of the sunken Temple consuming  any wandering adventurers Hapless enough to cross its  

path a bit further into the raid we have Jammal'an and Ogom a priest and an undead Avenger utterly  

dedicated to seeing the blood God Hakkar return  to the mortal world these two will keep you on  

your toes and have a few tricks up their sleeve to  keep the fight interesting each time you encounter  

them the last boss in this preview is the mighty  Green Dragon Eranikus Eranikus has been having a bit  

of a bad dream for the past few decades and that  dream is manifesting in our world in a variety of  

ways which Nora will talk about in just a little  bit for those that make it to his lay we can't  

recommend waking this big beast up but if you do  and are able to Prevail a lot of sweet loot will  

no doubt await you speaking of loot here's  a quick look at some of the awesome rewards  

you'll find inside the Sunken Temple first up we  have a new take on the Drake Stone item with a  

new Shadow Arcane spell damage variant next up  is a rather unique weapon yes it's an axe gun  

Shaman and Paladins have felt left out for quite  some time when it comes to having ranged weapons  

and short of Egan's Blaster there's not much for  them now you too can have a gun that you can swing  

like an axe or shoot like a gun with a cooldown of  course it's unfortunately a bit slow on the reload  

lastly we have a quick look at our tier tokens  similar to aq40 we have two different tokens  

with several classes on each we really like the  token system in Gnomeregan but it sometimes felt a bit  

bad to be rolling against the entire raid whenever  one dropped so now we'll have two different tokens  

and multiple will drop on each boss that can drop  set tokens and here's a quick look at some of the  

Epic rewards first off we've got a glow up for the  classic Embrace of the serpent robe for healers  

we've also updated the sword dragon's call one  cool thing about this weapon is that we've added  

several brand new glow effects for weapons in this  patch and this is one of the first items to take  

advantage of having a very fancy but still quite  classic new glow and just like in previous raids  

we've got several fun items lined up as well  the first item is the atalay blood ceremony  

which allows you and a friend or fremy to play a  deadly game where only one survives this item is  

great for when you need to decide something and  a coin flip just won't cut it the unorthodox hex  

stick allows you to embrace your inner Critter  and transform into a disgusting little creepy  

crawler to Dazzle and disgust your friends these  are just a few examples and there are several cool  

things coming with this patch we've intentionally  left the best ones for you to discover yourself  

lastly one bit of feedback we took to heart  this patch was that a lot of updated Quest  

rewards for previous level up raids could feel  a bit underwhelming so for sunken Temple we've  

actually gone a step further and helped rebalance  and restat many of the existing Quest rewards the  

first example here is is a Vanguard Helm and you  can see we've made it a bit more attractive to the  

classes that can use it and Helm of Exile as well  and well not a quest reward we have also carried  

forward some of the work we did updating dungeon  drops in the previous phase and revamped even more  

Dungeon Drop rewards including princess Theradras'  scepter and with that I'll turn it over to Matt  

to give us a preview of runes and just some of  the new abilities you'll get access to hey folks  

I'm Matt Everett senior engineer on the classic  team I'll go over some of the new runes you might  

find in Phase 3 before that I want to note that  we heard your feedback that a lot of runes last  

phase weren't accessible until Level 40 we've  tried to balance phase three so you'll find more  

runes while leveling but you'll still have some to  look forward to at 50 let's look at Druids first  

Gore gives you a chance to reset some key feral  cooldowns and generate some rage and improved  

bark skin gives you all the benefits of bark skin  without the drawbacks and you can cast it on your  

friends next up are Hunters with and load your  traps Grant you a free shot with no cool down  

this could be a great one-two punch with something  like double Chimera shot Focus fire lets your pet  

build up frenzy which increases its attack speed  you can activate it to consume your pet's frenzy  

boosting your attack speed and granting your  pet Focus next up are Mages deep freeze is a  

powerful 5-second stun on a frozen Target if the  target's immune to stuns it takes significant  

damage instead bail Firebolt lets you live on the  edge of risk and reward dealing heavy damage but  

decreasing your spirit if you reach zero Spirit  you die and by the way if you're leveling a new  

Mage you might find this Rune earlier than you  expect paladins improved Sanctuary makes you  

even tankier increasing sanctuary's damage blocked  and damage dealt back to attackers wrath lets you  

crit with Consecration and applies your melee  crit chance to your holy shock holy wrath and  

exorcism spells let's look at priests pain and  suffering allows your mind Flay ability to refresh  

the duration of shadow word pain while surge of light  causes your crits to make your next Smite or Flash  

heal instant cast Rogues honor among Thieves is  incredibly powerful granting you a combo Point  

each time a party member scores a crit it does  have a short cool down but you'll be swimming in  

combo points with this Rune cut to the chase makes  it easier to keep slice and dice up by allowing  

eviscerate and envenom to refresh it back to  its Max duration next up are Shaman when you  

deal melee damage mental dexterity applies your  intellect to your attack power and then applies  

30% of your attack power to your spells rip tide  is a fan favorite that instantly heals the target  

for an initial amount and then heals for a similar  amount over time when you chain heal a target with  

riptide active it gets consumed to power up the  chain heal warlocks pandemic makes damage over  

time spells even more overwhelming by letting them  crit with this Rune you can summon the iconic fel

guards to supplement your stable of demon Pets  the felguard is a powerful melee damage dealer  

capable of both tanking and dealing out serious  punishment he's not the only new demon you can  

summon this phase but I'll let you discover that  on your own warriors with taste for blood your Rend 

damage lets you use overpower once per 6 seconds  sword and board gives your devastate and revenge  

a chance to reset Shield slams cooldown and make  it cost no rage this time Warriors get a bonus  

Rune the much requested Gladiator stance lets you  live that sword and shield Gladiator fantasy this  

increases your damage when wearing a shield as  well as letting you use abilities from other  

stances at the cost of survivability this is one  we've really been looking forward to bringing to  

the season and we can't wait to see what Warriors  are able to do with it I love watching players  

work together to find all the new runes each phase  and I'm looking forward to this one up next Nora  

will join us to talk about PVP updates hey thanks  Matt my name's Nora Valletta and I'm a lead software  

engineer on Wow classic I'm here to talk about  some of the other updates we've got coming in  

phase three starting with PVP one of the things  we've learned from previous phases is that PVP  

can be a bit rough when the only thing available  is PVE gear that is generally set up with output  

stats rather than survivability stats as a result  we're going to be introducing a brand new level 50  

PVP set that requires ranks 5 through 7 to equip  and earn this is similar to the rank 10 and rank  

13 PVP sets in that it's a full six-piece set  with appropriate PVP set bonuses there will  

also be a starter set available from a new faction  called the emerald wardens but we'll go into more  

detail on them later on here's a quick look at a  few of the new PVP sets items you'll notice that  

they are a bit more specialized and focused than  the previous level 60 PVP sets were each class  

will have a variety of sets available to them such  that multiple different specs or roles are covered  

we're also making a few adjustments to the blood  moon event including adding brand new rewards for  

level 50 we'll also be adding a new currency for  the level 50 rewards called Massacre coins which  

you'll earn when killing higher level players  in the event will be retiring The Blood Stained  

commendations that are currently available from  the blood coin vendor any existing accomodations  

that you have will still function after the Patch  but don't hold on to them forever they will expire  

after 2 weeks we think it's okay if you're able  to bank these now to give you a bit of a leg up  

on PVP ranking at the start of the next phase but  we don't necessarily want you to be able to hoard  

enough coins to get you all the way up to rank 14  later on when that rank becomes available we'll  

have a new PVP honor consumable token for level  50 as well purchasable with the new currencies  

and how about some gear here are a few of the  new items ail ailable via the blood moon event  

in Phase 3 do note that the head Hunter's Barbed  spear is a warrior only weapon we also realize  

that ranged Hunters may have felt a bit left  out last time so we've gone ahead and given  

them a pretty strong crossbow option in this  round well phase three of season of Discovery  

will soon be upon us and with it comes new loot  new opportunities to gain experience and new  

adventure let's take a quick look at our new PVE  world event called nightmare incursions picture if  

you will the four Emerald portals scattered across  Azeroth at this point in history the dragons of  

nightmare Taerar Ysondre Emeriss and Lethon have not  yet arrived to spread their Terror however as you  

approach each portal you can't help but sense  hidden danger something's not quite right those  

brave enough to enter an emerald portal will be  plunged into a realm seeping with corruption and  

overrun with Dragons Treants and other poor souls  driven mad by the corruption but beware not all  

foes are alike some enemies can be defeated by  a single seasoned Adventurer While others are  

perhaps too powerful to be faced alone nightmare  incursions offer repeatable PVE content for levels  

25 through 50 to check it out Simply enter one  of the four Emerald portals located in duskwood  

Ashenvale Hinterlands or Feralas this is a great  new opportunity to earn experience and those who  

choose to jump in and fight the corruption will  have the chance to earn reputation with an allnew  

faction called the emerald wardens with great  danger comes great rewards the emerald wardens  

will be very grateful for your help and will  be offering a selection of choice new items  

to sweeten the deal one of the cool things about  nightmare incursions is that we plan to include  

some rewards at different player levels as  there will be content available for players  

roughly level 20 all the way to 50 across  all four nightmare portals the first example  

is this nightmare siphon trinket which could  be really fun for low-l alts for level 50 we  

have the Roar of the dream a somewhat unique ring  that has a sizable spell damage proc on it lastly  

we also plan to take a page from the burning  Crusade Playbook and make a level 50 PVP set  

available at honor with the new Emerald wardens  faction this set isn't as powerful as some of  

the other PVP item rewards we plan to add this  phase but it's a good stepping stone into the  

better items later on with the launch of phase  three comes a host of interesting new updates  

to professions continuing on from the first two  phases we'll be introducing a new Quest chain to  

give players access to New Nightmare armaments  Crafting recipes as well as some fun things  

for engineering enchanting and Alchemy we've also  learned a few lessons from the previous phase of  

professions so the cost to access the recipes  will be essentially free in terms of raw gold  

and the cost of the recipes that Ziri offers and  gnomeregan are going to be decreased as well in case you  

want to buy additional recipes for completion or  you have an ALT that wants to snag the recipes for  

themselves we think gold sinks are important and  are going to explore different ways later on to  

do that that are not so directly on the critical  path of gear progression here's a quick look at  

a few of the crafted items you can make this phase  there are many more across various professions and  

for various specs and roles as you can see some  of these items offer interesting new unequipped  

effects which are applied while you're under the  influence of The Nightmare if you'd prefer to  

stay nightmare free we've got some cool new items  such as the void powered Slayers Vambraces which  

can grant you immunity to fear for 15 seconds we  do plan to allow you to pick up specializations  

this phase as well as allow you to level to 300  in each profession additionally we've added a few  

new surprises here for example we are adding  a quest to allow you to get additional potion  

elixir and flask prodcts when crafting those  types of consumables you'll also have to do a  

little bit of leg work to unlock these things  but the benefits should be well worth it the  

Lion Share of our new toys involving profession  specs will be coming after level 60 and we have  

some very cool things planned there to allow  you to make the most of your professions well  

that was a lot of updates I hope I didn't forget  anything Josh I'm not forgetting anything am I now  

that you mention it Nora there is one small system  update you might have missed but first hi I'm Josh  

Greenfield senior game producer on Wow Classic  so there is one small system change coming and  

honestly the update is so minor we almost didn't  mention it because we didn't think anyone would  

really care but since we're all previewing things  we figured we might as well so in 1152 with phase  

three you may happen Upon A dashing dwarf from  a far away land that has one very special talent  

that He wants to share with you for a small fee of  course actually to be a little bit more specific  

he has two sets of special talents to share like  I said we were pretty sure this wouldn't be a big  

deal to most players we probably should have just  left it out of the presentation entirely so with  

that we're approaching the home stretch but we've  got a tiny bit more to discuss and we want to take  

some time to cover a few other miscellaneous  topics commonly asked question questions as  

well as a quick look at how things will start to  shape up at level 60 so let's jump right into that  

so the first topic here is World Buffs as with the  previous phases will continue to allow you to use  

the previous world buff up through the current  max level the new raid sunken Temple will also  

include a new world buff we'll also be making  some rather powerful consumables available for  

exchange on a certain NPC using materials found  in the sunken Temple raid these are spiritually  

similar to The zanza Elixirs that you could obtain  by exchanging items found in Zul'gurub they're quite  

powerful so you'll definitely want to bring  them with you to the raid when you can also as  

with previous phases we did want to clarify that  bankable repeatable Turn in items will not function  

to allow you to level quickly from 40 to 50 we  really love the preparation aspects of original  

wow and things like pre-questioning are great but  being able to bank hundreds or even thousands of  

repeatable quest Turn in items to get multiple  levels right when the phase begins is not going  

to be Ed in this or any phase going forward to  be clear this includes things like marks of Honor  

waste wander water pouches and the troll necklaces  from the Hinterlands one of the big lessons we've  

learned in season of Discovery is how tricky it  can be to balance the LevelUp journey and the  

Outdoor World but to also encourage players to  play multiple characters It's tricky to manage  

especially against a seasonal backdrop where the  content phases are relatively short by World of  

Warcraft standards to help out with this a bit we  introduced a very powerful discoverers Delight XP  

buff at the midpoint of phase 2 and while that  was effective at increasing the speed at which  

you could level alts it didn't really help to  reduce the fatigue that came with leveling your  

first main character by way of a compromise in  phase three you will earn 50% additional XP from  

all sources from levels 40 to 49 and this will  be active right when phase three goes live this  

is just to give a slight nudge right away it will  still be a sizable number of hours to hit 50 but  

this will help move that along without feeling  like you're either just flying through zones or  

conversely in danger of running out of quests if  questing is your preferred leveling method note  

that the 100% buff from 1 through 39 will remain  in place as well overall we think that these Buffs  

are a decent solution but they aren't what we  consider to be ideal we're going to carry a lot  

of what we learned forward if we do something like  this again and maybe look at other adjustments we  

can make to help smooth the leveling curve in  general additionally as with black fathom deeps  

before Gnomeregan will give a sizable amount of XP  for each boss kill so continuing to run that  

with your guild will be a worthwhile activity  when it is available to you on the same token  

we see nightmare incursions as a good quick way  to get a good chunk of XP if you find yourself  

wanting a change of pace from your normal leveling  routine there's a lot of repeatable content that  

gives experience there as for the raid release and  lockout schedule we've been thinking a lot about  

this and we've decided to shift sunken Temple to  a weekly lockout and it will be available right at  

the release of phase 3 kind of similar to what we  did with Gnomeregan in Phase 2 players will have five  

days to hit Level 50 if you want to try and get in  a raid during that first lockout and then the raid  

will work like any other weekly lockout resetting  on Tuesday or your normal Regional lockout day  

we decided to make this swap for a few reasons  first we've gotten feedback from players saying  

they would like to have a bit more consistency  with their raid schedule and with the raid size  

going up to 20 players in this phase being able  to plan longterm is even more important we'll  

also talk about this a little bit more in the  next few slides but we're also thinking ahead  

to what the rating landscape will look like once  we hit level 60 that also informs this decision  

lastly on this topic we will be sure we are being  generous with drops to compensate for this change  

that's a good segue to talk about level 60 in game  since we're getting close to 60 we think it makes  

sense to dig into a few more details of what you  can expect starting with phase 4 this preview is  

very very early and in no way comprehensive  but it's just meant to be a minor sneak peek  

at some things we have cooking again to stress  that much of what you will see here is still  

very much in development and some specifics could  and likely will change this is more of a look at  

our general thought process rather than the actual  set in stone plans we have as we alluded to a few  

slides ago we plan to standardize raid lockouts  from level 50 and Beyond to a weekly reset this  

includes things like zul'gurub ruins of ahn'qiraj  and onyxia's lair we also want to assure with  

our itemization updates many of the items even in  early raids remain relevant for a pretty good long  

time ultimately this is a very classic approach  and many items you got even as your pre- raid  

best in slot such as the Hand of Justice or the  Savage Gladiator Chain remained good for several  

tiers and we want to carry this forward with this  in mind however we know you will likely want to  

run several different raids a week but we want  to avoid a situation where Logistics gets messy  

because you have to contend with a large number  of a regular unwieldy raid lock timers by the  

time Blackwing lair is out for example there's  going to be a large menu of relevant things to  

do at level 60 and being able to plan and schedule  activities on a predictable Cadence is going to be  

very important last quick note on this while Upper  Black Rock Spire is technically a 10-player raid  

it's never had a lockout and that will remain  true it's essentially a 10-player dungeon and  

will remain that way so go farm those Briarwood  reeds another very frequently Asked question  

we've received is what about weapon skill racial  bonuses from the start we've suggested that you  

shouldn't need to worry too much about things like  orc and Human Weapon skills long term and that you  

should feel good about choosing whatever race you  want based on their Aesthetics or other bonuses  

that race gets apart from weapon skill bonus every  phase we get asked for a status update on this and  

we just wanted to confirm that yes the solution  is coming at level 60 at level 60 you will be  

able to discover a method to essentially swap in  and out up to two weapon skill bonuses for your  

character so for example if I were a troll Fury  Warrior and I had a mace and a dagger I could  

swap my passive bonuses to plus five Maces and plus  five daggers please note that these weapon skill  

bonuses do not stack with each other or with a  certain Race's normal passive weapon skill bonus  

so in the same scenario if I were a human Warrior  I already get plus five Maces for my racial skill  

so instead I might want to use plus five bows and  plus five daggers so that maybe my bow skill had  

a better chance to hit if I was pulling higher  level mobs just like your racial skills however  

these passives will stack with any weapon skill  you gain from items such as obsidian Edge blade  

or Maladath runed blade of the black flight these  unlockable passives will be available right at  

level 60 and while there will be a short Discovery  to unlock them everyone who wants them will have  

access to them early on continuing that line of  thought yes priests will also be able to unlock  

other races unique priest spells as well such  as devouring plague and fear Ward we don't want  

to spoil how this will work just yet but just like  weapon skills we do get asked about this a lot and  

wanted to confirm that this was also coming and  would be available early on at level 60 there will  

also be discoveries tied to accessing these spells  as well so this is the last big item in our level  

60 preview and we think it's the most impactful as  items are obviously going to be a major focus of  

the new level 60 in game we are essentially  totally revamping tear sets to add multiple  

variants for different specs and roles that each  class can fill we don't necessarily intend to make  

a full set for every single Niche play style in  every raid tier as some classes could end up with  

upwards of 5 to seven sets every few months but  we do want to try and cover a lot of the major  

roles as well as some new play Styles we've added  to different classes so that most unique roles  

each class has access to get something cool  at some point during their level 60 Journey  

additionally we plan to revamp many existing  nonset dungeon and raid items at level 60 as  

well as adding new best-in slot or nearly best-  in slot crafting options at 60 we think there's  

a lot of fun and interesting things we can do with  the level 60 professions and profession profession  

specialization crafts and we plan to expand  on those to keep crafting more relevant for a  

longer period of time lastly swapping profession  specializations will be easier and more flexible  

but will likely have a cost associated with doing  so we're still ironing out the final design for  

what this will look like but if you're familiar  with how this worked in Burning Crusade that might  

be a good starting point to inform how this might  work finally here's a few quick examples of what  

potential new tier sets could look like these are  very much not finalized so any of the stats or set  

bonuses could and probably will change so first  off you'll notice we've got a tanking Rogue set  

with a very interesting eight-piece bonus we've  also got a shock it and Paladin set that really  

plays up key abilities such as exorcism and holy  shock lastly we have a boomkin set that really  

leans into some of the bonuses we've recently  added to moonkin form again these are somewhat  

early on rough draft versions of some of these  items but we think being able to make exciting  

new variations of these iconic item sets is very  cool and it's going to be a defining feature of  

the level 60 ingame so with that we're done with  today's presentation thank you for bearing with us  

on this one as it was a long one we've had a blast  on this wild season of Discovery Journey with you  

so far and we honestly can't wait to get phase  three into your hands as well as provide a bit  

more information on phase 4 as we start getting  a little bit closer to that as always we want to  

express a heartfelt thanks from the WoW Classic  development team thank you for playing with us  

thank you for the feedback and thank you for the  participation in helping us develop this season  

we'll see you again when season of Discovery phase  3 goes live shortly thank you again and goodbye