WoW Classic Season of Discovery Hotfixes

WoW Classic Season of Discovery Hotfixes and Patch Notes – Nerfs and Buffs after initial release.

Here is an updated list of all the changes to Classes and specs on WoW Classic Season of Discovery. We'll add the latest changes to the top, and keep any other relevant recent changes under those. If there are a lot of changes we'll keep the past months worth.

Latest changes on December 2nd after the first 24 hours. We expect future changes to come in the form of minor hotfixes as Blizzard highlights major issues. Sadly, we suspect more of these will be nerfs for now rather than buffs.

Season of Discovery Hotfixes

April 22, 2024

Druid

• The Natural Weapons talents now increases all damage done by druids in Season of Discovery, instead of just physical damage.
• The Gale Winds rune now reduces the mana cost of Hurricane by 60%.
• Swiftmend no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on the target when used.
  • Developers’ notes: Please note that it does still require Rejuvenation or Regrowth to be on the target to be used.

Paladin

• Seal of Righteousness damage can now be critical hits.
• Sacred Shield’s duration is extended to 60 seconds (was 30 seconds).
• Crusader Strike has now gained an additional effect: Crusader strike now refreshes all judgement effects active on the target to a 30-second remaining duration.
• Seal of Martyrdom can now “twist” with other seals, including Seal of Command. Find out more about that in the Blizzard post

Priest

• Shadowform now increases all shadow damage done by 25% (was 15%).

Rogue

• Saber Slash bleed now stacks up to 5 times.
• Saber Slash bleed now also increases the impact damage done by Sinister Strike and Saber Slash by 15% per stack for the rogue who applied the bleed.
• Saber Slash bleed now deals 3% of the rogue’s Attack Power in damage per tick (was 5%).

Shaman

• Mental Dexterity now only triggers from dealing damage with Stormstrike and Lava Lash, and it now lasts 30 seconds (was 10 seconds).
• Burn now increases Flame Shock Damage by 100% and flame shock DoT duration by 6 seconds, and causes Flame Shock to strike up to 5 targets (was 3 targets).
  • Developers’ notes: We’ve received a lot of feedback about the overall usability of mental dexterity, particularly for Elemental Shamans. This ability was not intended to be used by elemental, so the adjustments we’ve made are to help ensure its usage is a bit more enhancement-centric. To compensate, we’ve increased the output and usability of the Burn rune, with a slight quality-of-life improvement in the form of a Flame Shock duration increase which allows two Lava Burst casts to be used within a single Flame Shock duration. This is likely not going to be enough to overall bring elemental up to the level we want, so we intend to continue to make other tactical adjustments in future class adjustment updates as needed.

• Players can now correctly activate their other talent specialization while under the effects of the preparation aura in Battlegrounds.

• Druid

  • Efflorescence will now work properly when Swiftmend is used on a guardian or pet belonging to a party member.

• Shaman

  • Healing Rain can no longer be cast when targeted a non-player (as intended in its text).

• Nightmare Incursions

  • Vengeful Ancient and Doomkin are now categorized Elite (was Rare Elite).
  • Credit for defeating Larsera, Florius, Ylanthrius, and Tyrannikus is now awarded cross-faction.

• The Blood Moon

  • Zanzil the Outcast

    • Ward of Zanzil will now despawn after 30 seconds, summon a reduced number of zombie skeletons, and will be recast less frequently.
    • Ward of Zanza no longer has totem immunities, and Zombies will despawn after a short period of time.
  • The Crystal Shore Blood Moon graveyard is now farther north.

April 3, 2024

Season of Discovery

• Fixed an issue with the Spirit of Zandalar buff given out by turning in the “Heart of Hakkar” quest not being granted to players in Booty Bay.
• The quest “Salvaging the Salvagematic” can once again be picked up from Ziri Littlesprocket after completing the “Salvagematic 9000” quest.

April 2, 2024

Season of Discovery

• Fixed an issue that was preventing the Blood Moon event from working properly.
• Hunter
  • Fixed an issue where the Frenzy tooltip on the master Hunter now correctly shows 6% instead of the incorrect 40%. This has no effect on the actual damage done by the pet.
• Shaman
  • Electromantic Caster Mail set – Reduced Lightning Bolt cast time reduction to 0.1 seconds (was 0.2 seconds).
    • Developer’s note: This set bonus was really strong and resulted in 10% more Lightning Bolts. We’ve reduced the cast time reduction to avoid the possibility of this older set bonus not being replaced with later Phase 3 gear.
  • Fixed an issue with Way of Earth that caused it to continually trigger the global cooldown while dual-wielding.

March 12th

 Hunter

•  Steady Shot – A steady shot that causes 75% ranged weapon damage (up from 60%).

 Mage

•  Living Flame – Summons a spellfire flame that moves toward the target, leaving a trail of spellfire. This trail deals 85 Spellfire damage every second to nearby enemies. Lasts 10 sec (was 20).  30 sec cooldown (was 60).

March 1st (coming with weekly reset)

• Hunter
  • Chimera Shot damage increased to 120% of weapon damage (was 100%) and Chimera Shot Serpent Sting damage increased to 48% of Serpent Sting damage (was 40%).
  • Explosive Shot base damage done before Attack Power increased by 15%.
  • Carve damage increased to 65% of weapon damage (was 50%).
• Mage
  • Frostfire Bolt base damage increased by 50%, and its increased damage from bonus spell damage increased by 16%, identical to the value for Fireball.
  • Spellfrost Bolt base damage increased by 50%, and its increased damage from bonus spell damage increased by 14%, identical to the value for Frostbolt.
  • Regeneration, Mass Regeneration, and Chronostatic Preservation spell power coefficients increased by 88%.
    • Developers’ notes: This is to compensate for Mage healers wearing primarily items which grant “damage and healing” instead of “healing”.
  • Chronostatic Preservation mana cost decreased by 44%.
  • Resolved some tooltip issues with Chronostatic Preservation.
• Paladin
  • Seal of Martyrdom damage increased to 50% weapon damage per swing (was 40%). Seal of Martyrdom Judgement increased to 85% weapon damage (was 70%).
  • Seal of Martyrdom Seal and Judgement effects now benefit from talents and effects that modify Seal of Righteousness, particularly Improved Seal of Righteousness.
• Warlock
  • Grimoire of Synergy now increases damage done by the Warlock and their pet by 25% when it is active (was 5%).
• Warrior
  • Devastate damage increased to 150% of weapon DPS (was 100%), before being increased by number of Sunder Armor stacks.

February 26, 2024

• Hyperconductive Caster Set’s 3-piece bonus now works correctly with healing and damaging runes.
• Chronostatic Preservation duration increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds), and now works with mouseover macros.
• Drained of Blood will now periodically remove debilitating effects that are still affecting the player.
• Additional Chained Spirit graveyards and patrols have been added during the Blood Moon event.
• Fixed an issue with Lesser Arcane Elixir that caused it to not be usable at the required level on the tooltip.
• Kha’damu’s Blood Craze will no longer increase his damage dealt.
• Hunter – Chimera Shot no longer extends the duration of Wyvern Sting’s periodic damage (developers’ notes: that interaction was never intended).
• Rogue – Between the Eyes no longer shares a cooldown with ranged attacks.

February 21, 2024

• Elite and Dungeon Quests now grant additional bonus experience.
• The Dismantle enchant now procs more often for casters and melee.
• The vendor price of Ez-Thro Radiation Bombs and High-Yield Radiation Bomb has been reduced.
• Players in the Spirit World can now resurrect at Chained Spirits for up to 30 minutes after a Blood Moon ends.
• Spirit of Redemption Form will no longer instantly cancel if you attempt to cast spells not allowed in that form. Doing so now returns an error message.
• A Zandalarian Emissary can now be found atop the Durotar zeppelin tower.
• Mage
  • Spell Power now benefits the critical strike damage of Spellfrost Bolt.
• Rogue
  • Preparation now properly resets the cooldowns of Quick Draw, Between the Eyes, and Redirect.
  • Shuriken Toss will no longer sometimes cause loss of combo points when a Rogue is talented into Seal Fate and a bounced Shuriken crits a secondary target.
• Shaman
  • Offhand Stormstrike hits can now correctly trigger weapon procs, including Windfury Weapon and Flurry.
  • Healing Rain no longer has a variant height for its animation. The Healing Rain cloud now always appears just above player’s heads.
• Warlock
  • Haunt will now properly increase the damage done by Siphon Life.
  • Developers’ notes: Siphon Life behaves like Drain Life and will only be increased by Haunt if it is cast while Haunt is already active. These abilities do not dynamically update their values when Haunt is applied or falls off.

February 20, 2024

• Increased the number of crafting materials found in Boxes of Gnomeregan Salvage and slightly increased the drop rate of Grime-Encrusted Salvage throughout Gnomeregan.
• Druid
  • Berserk now also increases the number of targets struck by Lacerate while it is active.
  • Starsurge bonus damage to Starfire increased to 80% (was 66%). Corrected a bug causing this bonus damage to be lower than intended at level 40.
  • Swipe now scales with attack power, gaining 10% of attack power as damage.
  • Threat caused by Swipe greatly increased.
  • Rip duration increased to 16 seconds (was 12 seconds).
• Hunter
  • Raptor Strike damage when the Melee Specialist rune is active is now normalized weapon damage.
• Paladin
  • Fixed an issue where Fiery Weapon enchantment and Seal of Martyrdom were triggering each other. Neither can be triggered by the other any longer.
  • Fixed an issue where Fiery Blaze and Fiery Weapon enchantments could trigger or be triggered by Seal of Martyrdom. Those interactions do not happen anymore.
• Priest
  • Mind Spike damage increased by 10%.
  • Void Plague damage increased by 10%.
  • Shadow Word: Death base damage before modifiers decreased by 40% and spellpower coefficient adusted to 42.9% (was 64.3%).
  • Developers’ notes: Overall, this should result in a 33-40% damage reduction on Shadow Word: Death, depending on the amount of spellpower the priest has. Shadow Word: Death has been doing a larger percentage of overall priest damage than intended, and we feel like this could begin to put additional pressure on healers in PvE, as spellpower gear improves and the damage that priests inflict on themselves continues to scale upwards. It could also prove to be increasingly oppressive in PvP, as it’s an instant attack that can be used on the move,  from range, with very little counterplay.
• Rogue
  • Shuriken Toss bounce range reduced to 10 yards (was 15 yards).
    • Developers’ notes: This should reduce the chance of it bouncing a little too far and pulling extra packs in dungeons. It now matches the range of other chain spells like Chain Lightning and Avenger’s Shield.
• Shaman
  • Fixed an issue where Fire Nova did not benefit properly from Elemental Mastery.
  • The Dual-Wield Specialization rune now provides 50% bonus damage to your offhand weapon swings.
  • Lava Lash now gains 50% increased damage if Flametongue Weapon is imbued on your offhand.
  • The proc chance of Maelstrom Weapon is now roughly 50% higher when your main hand weapon or your two-hand weapon is imbued with Windfury Weapon.

February 16th, 2024

• Druid
  • Starsurge was incorrectly getting 30% additional critical strike chance when Eclipse (Lunar) was active. It now only gets 30% increased critical strike chance from Eclipse (Solar).
• Hunter
  • Chimera Shot – Scorpid is now properly mitigated by Weapon Chains and reduction to Disarm effects.
• Paladin
  • Fixed an issue where Seal of Righteousness ranks 4 and higher did less damage than rank 3. This fix has been applied to Season of Discovery and Classic Era.
• Priest
  • Spirit of Redemption will no longer be prevented from triggering for Priests whose Dispersion or Pain Suppression is on cooldown.
  • Each Priest now correctly creates their own separate stack of Mind Spike effects on the target, and consumes only their own stack.
  • Fixed an issue where Prayer of Mending was double dipping with Spiritual Healing, and was also increasing by 10% per bounce on top of that.
• Shaman
  • Fixed an issue where the benefit of Dual Wield Specialization rune could be lost for Shamans when swapping weapon configurations.
  • Fixed an issue where Stormstrike would sometimes do offhand damage despite no offhand equipped.
  • The range on Decoy Totem is now the correctly intended 30 yards, matching the radius of its effect preventing movement impairment.
• Warlock
  • Subjugate Demon used against players in Metamorphosis now has a 10 second duration, with diminishing duration like other crowd-control effects used on players. It is considered a Charm effect like Mind Control.
• Stranglethorn Vale PvP Event
  • Warlocks and Hunters participating in the Blood Moon will now resurrect with their last active pet.
  • Fixed an interaction with Blood Moon and Spirit of Redemption resurrecting the fallen Priest earlier than intended.
  • Fixed an issue with Blood Coin turn-ins when a player is the victim of Subjugate Demon or Mind Control.
  • Drained of Blood during the Blood Moon event now also grants immunity to movement impairing effects.
  • Fixed an issue where stacks of Blood for the Blood Loa could sometimes exceed the intended 255.
  • The Chosen of the Blood Loa will now be visible in the spirit world.
• Druid
  • Swipe now scales with attack power, gaining 10% of attack power as damage. Threat caused by Swipe has been greatly increased.
  • The Berserk rune now also causes Lacerate to hit 3 targets.
  • The duration of Rip has been increased to 16 seconds (was 12 seconds).
  • The next Starfire cast after the Starsurge rune ability now has its damage increased to 80% (was 66%).
    • Corrected a bug causing this bonus damage to be lower than intended at level 40.
• Shaman
  • The Dual-Wield Specialization rune now provides 50% bonus damage to your offhand weapon swings.
  • Lava Lash now gains 50% increased damage if Flametongue Weapon is imbued on your offhand.
  • The proc chance of Maelstrom Weapon is now roughly 50% higher when your main hand weapon or your two-hand weapon is imbued with Windfury Weapon.
• Mage
  • Conjure Water (Rank 5) will now conjure a full stack of 20 with each cast (was 2).
    • Developers’ notes: The tooltip will still indicate that only 2 are conjured. We hope to adjust the tooltip in the future.
• Paladin
  • Art of War now reduces the mana cost of Exorcism and Holy Shock by 80% when active.
  • Beacon of Light base mana cost has been greatly decreased.

February 14, 2024

• Corrected an issue where players leaving a party sometimes lost their stacks of Blood for the Blood Loa.
• The Blood Moon now increases the health of participants by 30%.
• Resurrection from Chained Spirits during the Blood Moon event now also grants players 100% of their mana.
• Blood Moon-averse Zandalarian Emissaries will now ward players in the far-off lands of Ratchet, Tirisfal Glades, and Duskwood.
• The scoreboards during the Blood Moon event should now be more responsive in activating and deactivating when the event starts and ends.
• Druid
  • Fixed an issue where Berserk was not discounting the energy cost of abilities learned from runes such as Savage Roar, Sunfire, and Skull Bash.
  • Starsurge visual corrected to not hit the caster as well as the target.
  • Savage Roar visual no longer has a Challenging Roar animation attached to the cast.
  • Eclipse now properly reduces spell pushback on Wrath and Starfire.
• Paladin
  • Fixed an issue where Guarded by the Light’s effect could be cancelled by the player.
• Priest
  • Fixed a bug that caused Void Plague to benefit more from spell power than intended.
  • Fixed a bug that made it possible for a Priest to place two copies of Renew on a target.
• Shaman
  • Power Surge gained during a Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, or Chain Lighting cast will no longer be consumed by that cast (since it does not benefit).
• Warlock
  • Fixed an issue with Fear ranks 2 and 3 not changing into Menace properly while Metamorphosis is active.
  • Fixed an issue where Dance of the Wicked was giving an incorrect amount of mana back.
• Gnomeregan
  • Electrocutioner 6000
    • Players can no longer out range or use line of sight to prevent the cast or chain effect of Static Arc.
  • Mechanical Menagerie
    • The fight now resets properly if one of the bosses was in self-repair mode when the fight resets.
  • Rig Wars
    • Thermaplugg’s Safe will now spawn under one of the Bomb Dispensers after defeating Mekgineer Thermaplugg.

February 12, 2024

• You can now get a new Squall-breakers Potion from Rau Cliffrunner in Freewind Post upon accepting the quest “Calm Before the Storm”.
• Recipe: Lesser Arcane Elixir is now bind-on-pickup.
• The Battle for Ashenvale weekly quests “Clear the Forest!” and “Repelling Invaders” now grant full XP and reputation rewards, through level 40.
• The Ashenvale Rallying Cry world buff is now usable through level 39.
• The Spark of Inspiration world buff now correctly increases +healing.
• Item requirements for the quests “Power of da Wind”, “Power of da Earth”, and “Power of da Water” have been reduced.
• Druid
  • Starsurge base damage reduced by 35%, and its benefit from bonus spell damage effects reduced to 42.9%, matching other instant spells.
  • Starsurge now provides a new effect: your next Starfire cast within 15 seconds deals 66% increased damage.
  • Fixed an issue with Enhanced Restoration preventing Nourish from gaining increased healing from Rejuvenation and Regrowth.
• Paladin
  • Fixed an issue where the Sheathe of Light spell power proc wasn’t correctly activated by melee attacks.
• Shaman
  • Fixed an issue where Ravaging Tempest could sometimes not lose its protective aura when Ailgrah Splittusk was killed.
• Stranglethorn Vale PvP Event
  • Players who resurrect in Stranglethorn Vale during the Blood Moon event and gain Drained of Blood will now be immune to attack during its duration, but unable to cast spells or attack. They can mount and move to another location and are invisible to players outside their party.
  • Drained of Blood duration reduced to 20 seconds (was 60 seconds).
  • Drained of Blood now has a visual.
  • Players who wish to opt out of Blood Moon should now more easily notice the Zandalarian Emissary.