The battle between Light and the Void spans across four new zones: Eversong Woods, Zul’Aman, Harandar, and Voidstorm.
Silvermoon City Hub
The legendary blood elf capital serves as the Midnight campaign hub while both factions face new threats.
New Allied Race: Haranir
Earn the trust of the Haranir through a series of quests to unlock this new allied race. Haranir will be able to join either the Horde or the Alliance and play as a Druid, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, or Warrior.
Devourer Demon Hunter Specialization
Learn more about the new damage-dealing spec for Demon Hunters, focused on delivering distinct gameplay mechanics depending on your specialization and Hero Talents using Void magic.
Void Elf Demon Hunter
Void Elves can now heed the call of the Demon Hunter, taking up the mantle to push back against the hungering forces of the Void.
Arator’s Journey
Join Arator through an epic globetrotting campaign questline, in search of the truth about the nature of the Light.
New Dungeons
Conquer eight new dungeons, each with unique environments and storylines.
New Raids
Raid testing begins the week of November 18. See the raid testing schedule for details.
New World Bosses
The World Boss world quest will appear after completing the Midnight Campaign and unlocking World Quests.
New Delves
Take on new challenges through ten new Delves and one new seasonal Nemesis Delve alongside a new NPC companion—legendary blood elf rogue Valeera Sanguinar. You’ll experience more of the story of Midnight interwoven through new quests and even experience the great outdoors—taking the adventure outside for the first time.
Prey
Track powerful targets throughout the zones of Midnight in three difficulties: Normal, Hard, and Nightmare. Successfully find and defeat your quarry to earn valuable new rewards as you progress through the system.
Arcantina
Meet up with some familiar faces for stories and quests, sending you back out into Azeroth once more.
New Activities
Whether you’re looking for a challenge or just want to do a little more exploration into the stories found in Midnight, we’ve got you covered with some new activities that we’re sure will appeal to many playstyles.
Journeys
Engage with World of Warcraft content in a meaningful way thanks to a brand-new feature tab in their Adventure Guide—Journeys—with a significant update to how you track your in-game progress
Talent Updates
With the release of Midnight, a new adventure path opens up, raising the level cap to ninety. Along with these additional levels, we’re expanding talent trees with exciting new abilities and introducing what we call Apex talents.
Profession Updates and New Recipes
PvP Updates:
New Epic Battleground: Slayer’s Rise
Slayer’s Rise World PvP
Training Grounds
Housing
Endeavors
Additional decor is available from neighborhood vendors, and more new decor (neighborhood and otherwise) will be added throughout the Beta.
New Player and Returning Player Experiences
User Interface Updates
STAT SQUISH
We’ve squished numbers across the board. Like previous squishes, we are reducing values on: player and creature health, damage, healing, item level, and stats on items. This squish will not affect player character levels.
For players logging into Beta, the new character templates will reflect the expected player power from levels 80-90.
CLASSES
COMBAT TUNING
Developers’ notes: As Midnight transitions into beta, tuning will quickly start happening at a much more rapid pace. We are working to get things into a better tuned state to ensure quality playtesting and feedback from both internal and external sources. This tuning will come in various stages and won’t all happen at once, but a few notable changes are happening that feel worth discussing slightly more:
Several classes will see some generic increases or decreases to their overall throughput amounts. Most of this right now is to coincide with “zeroing out” some passive modifiers attached to the class or spec that was adjusting their throughput. Rather than continue to tweak this number up and down, most of them have been set to zero. In some cases, we adjusted the spec’s tuning up or down to compensate for the change. In other cases, we felt it was ok to not adjust the spec’s throughput and just return the values to zero.
Melee classes are starting to see an increase to their auto-attack damage dealt either in this week’s update or in the coming week’s updates. Auto-attacking is a part of melee characters, and we want to make sure that an appropriate amount of damage is being attributed to your auto-attacks while engaged in combat.
All healers had a 20% increase to their damage dealt this week. We are monitoring the rate at which they can complete content while solo and felt that a boost to their offensive throughput would be appropriate.
For the full list of class changes, please view the class notes throughout Alpha in the previous replies in this forum thread.
DEATH KNIGHT
Blood
Coagulopathy’s duration has been increased to 15 seconds, the maximum stacks has been reduced to 4, and Blood Plague damage has been reduced to 10% per stack (was 25%).
Blood Plague’s damage has been increased by 50%.
Frost
All damage dealt reduced by 5%.
DEMON HUNTER
Hero Talents
Fel-Scarred/Void-Scarred
Devourer
Enduring Torment has been updated – Now increases the effectiveness of Mastery: Demon Within by 10% while not in Metamorphosis.
Devourer
Voidrush has been updated – Fury drain reduction effect duration reduced by 50% for The Hunt and Voidblade.
Developers’ notes: The fury drain reduction is intended to cover the duration of your dash and cushion the melee build from the increased downtime they might suffer from dashing around. The previous values were too substantial, making the melee build a critical component of longer Metamorphosis windows.
Umbral Blade has been updated – Now causes Reap’s cooldown to be reduced by Haste.
Rolling Torment has been updated – When Void Metamorphosis expires, for each unused Soul you harvested, gain 5 Fury and increase your damage by 0.5% for 12 seconds.
Developers’ notes: Devourer has been overperforming in AOE encounters, so we’re adjusting the power of Void Ray and Collapsing Star while also adding some additional tuning hooks to make sure they’re still dealing enough damage in single target.
Focused Ray has been updated – Void Ray deals 50% more damage when damaging a single target.
Collapsing Star has been updated – Collapsing Star now deals 50% additional damage to its primary target and its maximum stack count has been increased to 40 (was 35). The tooltip now also more accurately updates based on changes to Collapsing Star from various talents.
Developers’ notes: The cost to cast Collapsing Star is unchanged at 30. This change just gives you a bit more room to overcap souls as you approach Collapsing Star’s casting cost.
Collapsing Star damage reduced by 50%.
Void Ray damage reduced by 25%.
Metamorphosis Void Ray damage reduced by 50%.
Hungering Slash damage reduced by 33%.
Voidstep damage reduced by 66%.
Devourer’s Leather Specialization now correctly increases Intellect (was Agility).
Demonic Wards is now learned at level 27.
Fixed an issue where Devourer was gaining extra critical strike chance from Vengeance and Havoc’s critical strike passive.
Void Metamorphosis can no longer be aura cancelled.
EVOKER
Preservation
All healing reduced by 12%.
HUNTER
Hero Talents
Dark Ranger
Marksmanship
New Talent: Through the Eyes – Headshot can now stack 5 additional times. This is a choice node against Ebon Bowstring.
Pack Leader
Hogstrider has been updated – Now grants Hatchet Toss and Cobra Shot a 200% damage increase regardless of the number of targets struck by your Boar. Number of targets struck by the Boar now increases the number additional targets struck by Cobra Shot and Hatchet Toss.
Marksmanship
Apex Talents: Take Aim
Rapid Fire damage increased by 25%. Each shot fired from Rapid Fire reduces the cooldown of Aimed Shot by 0.5 seconds.
Aimed Shot’s critical strike damage is increased by 25%/50% of your critical strike damage. The damage of your other ranged abilities is increased by 3%/6%.
Aimed Shot always critically strikes.
New Talent: Focus Fire – When Surging Shots resets the cooldown of Rapid Fire, the damage of your next Rapid Fire is increased by 20%.
New Talent: Unload – When Rapid Fire begins and finishes channeling, it also fires an additional Arcane Shot at 100% effectiveness. If your target is below 20% health, Rapid Fire instead fires additional Kill Shots.
New Talent: Critical Precision – Precise Shots now increases the critical strike chance of Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot by 10%.
Small Game Hunter has been updated – Now increases Volley damage by 15% (was Explosive Shot).
Headshot has been updated – Damage from Kill Shot increases the damage your target receives from Black Arrow by 2%, stacking up to 10 times.
Developers’ notes: Headshot’s previous iteration had a much larger impact on Marksmanship’s rotation than we’d like. This newer version should be simpler and particularly attractive on longer fights.
Surging Shots should now more reliably activate while in combat.
Double Tap has returned.
Oh’naran Winds has been removed.
Survival
Takedown range reduced to 15 yards (was 25 yards).
Fixed an issue where off-hand items were not correctly granting their stats while dual-wielding.
MAGE
Hero Talents
Frostfire
Frostfire Bolt damage increased by 44%.
Frostfire Bolt direct damage reduced by 25%.
Spellslinger
Frost
Polished Focus has been updated – No longer causes Ice Lance to Shatter 1 additional stack of Freezing. Now causes Ice Lance to reapply 1 stack of Freezing when it Shatters its maximum possible Freezing stacks.
Class
Reflection has been updated – Now castable while casting other spells and is not affected by the global cooldown.
Arcane
Clearcasting’s overlay now communicates how many charges of Clearcasting you have.
Illuminated Thoughts now increases Clearcasting’s chance to trigger by 3% (was 5%).
All damage dealt increased by 15%.
Arcane Blast damage increased by 50%.
Arcane Pulse damage increased by 50%.
Arcane Missiles damage increased by 25%.
Fire
Feel the Burn has been updated – Now grants 2% Mastery for 4 seconds (was 3% Mastery for 6 seconds).
Fireball damage reduced by 25%.
Pyroblast and Flamestrike damage increased by 5%.
Fixed several issues causing Fireball and Frostfire Bolt modifiers to not correctly increase the damage.
Frost
New Talent: Improved Flurry – Flurry fires 1 additional missile.
New Talent: Thermal Void – Flurry has a 100% chance to cause your next Ice Lance to repeat its cast at 100% effectiveness.
Developers’ notes: Master Lancer was putting too much emphasis on pooling Freezing and casts of Ice Lance. Our goal with this new Thermal Void design is to create some more excitement around Brain Freeze while still giving you some clear gameplay direction by incentivizing “some” pooling.
Permafrost Lances has been updated – Now increases Shatter damage by 10% for the duration of Frozen Orb (was Ice Lance damage).
Glacial Attunement has been updated – Now increases Flurry and Blizzard damage (was Flurry and Ice Lance).
Freezing Winds has been updated – No longer increases the number of Freezing stacks applied by Blizzard.
Fractured Frost has been updated – Now causes Ice Lance to strike 2 additional enemies (was 3).
Developers’ notes: We’d like Shatter to be a powerful part of Frost’s kit in the 1-3 target range and slightly fall off as the target count gets higher and higher. Comet Storm should feel like an exciting exception to this rule.
Ice Lance now Shatters 5 stacks of Freezing (was 4).
The Starter Build for Frost Mage has been updated.
Developers’ notes: Shatter continues to dominate Frost’s damage breakdown, so we’re significantly reducing its damage while increasing the rest of Frost’s kit.
Shatter damage reduced by 50%.
Frostbolt damage increased by 100%.
Glacial Spike damage increased by 100%.
Flurry damage increased by 50%.
Ray of Frost damage increased by 50%.
Ice Lance damage increased by 50%.
Frozen Orb damage increased by 100%.
Waterbolt damage increased by 100%.
Water Jet damage increased by 100%.
Hand of Frost damage increased by 25%.
Flurry has a new spell icon.
The following talents have been removed:
Master Lancer
Winter’s Whisper
MONK
Mistweaver
New Class Talent: Chi Warding – You heal for 3% of magic damage taken.
Secret Infusion has been redesigned – After using Thunder Focus Tea, your next spell gives 2%/4% increase of a stat. Only one stat increase may be active at once.
Spiritfont now applies Soothing Mists and Chi Cocoons at 30% effectiveness (was 50%).
All healing reduced by 5%.
Thunder Focus Tea’s cooldown has been increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
PALADIN
Holy
New Class Talent: Armory of Light – While wearing a shield, you have a 15% chance to block incoming spells, reducing their damage by 20%. Without a shield, you have a 15% chance to parry incoming physical attacks, reducing their damage by 20%.
Solar Grace has been redesigned – Now increases Haste by 5%.
Gleaming Rays has been redesigned – Holy Power Spenders deal 3% additional damage and healing.
Sun’s Avatar has been redesigned – Now always causes you to link to Dawnlights and no longer increases the duration of Dawnlights or releases additional Dawnlights during Avenging Wrath.
Rising Sunlight has been redesigned – Now increases your healing by up to 10%, based on the average health percentage of allies with your Beacon of Light.
Beacon of the Savior absorb shield reduced by 50%.
All healing reduced by 5%.
Retribution
All damage dealt reduced by 11%.
PRIEST
Discipline
Master the Darkness now causes Void Shield to reflect 15% of damage taken to enemies (was 50%).
Void Shield and Power Word: Shield now share a cooldown.
Void Shield and Power Word: Shield can no longer stack on the same target per Priest.
Developers’ notes: We are making adjustments this week to lower the value of Void Shield which we feel is negatively impacting gameplay and dominating the value of the spec. We’re also preventing base Power Word: Shield and Void Shield from stacking which we felt was worth trying allowing initially but feel it’s better for the specialization’s health for them to be exclusive.
ROGUE
Hero Talents
Deathstalker
Darkest Night has been updated – When you consume the final Deathstalker’s Mark from a target or your marked target dies, gain 30 Energy (was 40) and your next Envenom cast with 5 or more combo points is guaranteed to critically strike, deals 40% (was 60%) increased damage, and applies 3 stacks of Deathstalker’s Mark to the target. Garrote does not apply Deathstalker’s Mark while you have Darkest Night.
Developers’ notes: The goals for these changes to Deathstalker’s Mark are to make it more forgiving to apply and to clarify the cycle of Deathstalker’s Mark and Darkest Night. Assassination no longer needs to be in Stealth to apply Deathstalker’s Mark, but a new Deathstalker’s Mark cannot be applied while one is already active. It’s also easier to activate Darkest Night - it now requires you to spend 5 combo points instead of the maximum. It can still be rewarding to save up to max since that finisher hits hard!
Darkest Night now only applies 3 stacks of Deathstalker’s Mark if no other Deathstalker’s Mark is already active.
Darkest Night: Envenom/Eviscerate cast with Darkest Night does not consume a stack of active Deathstalker’s Marks.
Developers’ notes: These changes to Deathstalker’s Mark and Darkest Night target situations where a player has Darkest Night, but does not want to prioritize Envenom and thus can’t apply Deathstalker’s Mark. For instance, they might have Darkest Night from killing an enemy, but want to prioritize Garrote and Rupture on a new pack. Now, Garrote will still apply a new stack of Deathstalker’s Mark, and the player may use Envenom when appropriate. Before, it was impossible to use a Darkest Night Envenom on a target with Deathstalker’s Mark, and we are retaining that behavior. We do not want it to be worthwhile in single target situations to apply Deathstalker’s Mark with Garrote when you have Darkest Night.
Deathstalker’s Mark: Garrote/Shadowstrike may now apply Deathstalker’s Mark even if the player has Darkest Night.
Clear the Witnesses has been updated – Fan of Knives/Shuriken Storm damage increased by 50%.
Corrupt the Blood has been updated – Rupture damage increased by 10%.
Bait and Switch now causes Evasion to reduce magical damage taken by 15% (was 20%).
Hunt Them Down damage reduced by 50%.
Fatebound
Damage dealt by Tails Fatebound coin flips reduced by 50%.
Trickster
Unseen Blade damage reduced by 20%.
Assassination
Melee auto attack damage increased by 200%.
Rupture and Garrote damage increased by 10%.
Envenom damage reduced by 5%.
Internal bleeding damage increased by 20%.
Implacable Strikes damage increased by 30%.
Motivated Murderer increases your Energy generation by 20% (was 30%).
Venomous Vim grants 3 Energy when it triggers (was 4).
Implacable rank 1 now grants base 20% Energy generation when Envenom expires (was 40%) and its maximum value is 80% (was 100%).
Developers’ notes: Our goal for Assassination’s rotation is to reward players for pooling enough Energy to string together several Envenoms without letting the effect drop. Energy generation was high enough that Envenom could be maintained longer than intended, so we’ve reduced the Energy generation rate of some Assassination abilities to reward deliberate planning.
Fixed an issue preventing Deathmark from increasing damage targets take from Garrote, Rupture, and weapon poisons.
Fixed an issue preventing Finish the Job from increasing damage dealt by abilities.
Outlaw
Take 'Em By Surprise has been redesigned and renamed Preparation – Immediately reset the cooldowns of Adrenaline Rush, Between the Eyes, Blade Flurry, Blade Rush, and Killing Spree. 4 minute cooldown.
Acrobatic Strikes has been updated – Auto-attacks increase auto-attack damage by 3% and increase movement speed by 1% for 3 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.
All ability damage increased by 38%.
Melee auto attack damage increased by 210%.
Summarily Dispatched increases Dispatch damage by 10%/20% (was 3%/6%).
Killing Spree damage increased by 10%.
Gravedigger Apex Talent: Scoundrel Strike damage increased by 100%.
Improved Between the Eyes now causes Between the Eyes critical strikes to deal 3 times normal damage (was 4).
Deft Maneuvers now also increases the Energy cost of Blade Flurry by 30.
Grand Melee’s bonus to Blade Flurry damage to nearby enemies reduced to 8% (was 10%).
Fixed an issue that could cause Between the Eyes and Killing Spree to appear available to use when they were actually still on cooldown.
SHAMAN
Enhancement
All damage dealt reduced by 2%.
WARLOCK
Class
Developers’ notes: We are revising our approach to Curses and Blights for Midnight. Our intention with Pacts were to reduce the number of keybinds that Curses and Blights would occupy, however, we noticed during our playtests how demanding the extra key press was and we want to avoid a situation where making macros was required to optimally play with the Pact functionality. In this iteration, we are readding Curse of Exhaustion and Tongues to the class tree and adding Blight of Tongues as a choice against Blight of Weakness.
New Talent: Curse of Tongues – Forces the target to speak in Demonic, increasing the casting time of all spells by 30% for 1 minute.
New Talent: Curse of Exhaustion – Reduces the target’s movement speed by 50% for 12 seconds.
New Talent: Blight of Tongues – Call forth a cloud of cloying shadow mist that envelopes the target and all enemies within 10 yards, increasing their casting time of all spells by 100% for 12 seconds.
Blight of Tongues is now a choice against Blight of Weakness.
New starter builds have been implemented for all 3 specializations.
The following talents have been removed:
Pact of Exhaustion
Pact of Tongues
WARRIOR
Class
Barbaric Training now also increases the damage and critical strike damage of Whirlwind and Raging Blow for Fury Warriors.
Champion’s Spear damage dealt when leaping to the spear reduced by 80%.
Thunder Clap now applies Rend to all targets if you know Rend (was 5 targets).
Fury
Apex Talents: Rampaging Berserker
Rampage damage increased by 10% and Rampage generates a stack of Rampaging Berserker. When you use Recklessness you go Berserk, consuming all stacks of Rampaging Berserker to gain 1% Strength for 12 seconds for each stack of Rampaging Berserker consumed.
Rampage’s Rage cost is reduced by 15/30 and Rampage damage is increased by 5%/10% while Berserking.
Rampage extends the duration of Berserk by 2 seconds.
Meat Cleaver has been updated – Whirlwind deals 50% increased damage when it hits 3 or more targets.
Ragedrinker has been updated – Bloodthirst critical strikes now restore twice as much health and increase the damage of Raging Blow by 10% for 4 seconds.
Deft Experience has been updated – Bloodthirst critical strike chance is increased by 5%/10% and if you are enraged, it extends your Enrage by 0.5 seconds/1 second. This extension is doubled if Bloodthirst critically strikes your primary target.
Rampaging Ruin’s damage dealt increased by 50%, but it now deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets (was 8 targets)
Unslaked Thirst has been removed.
Protection
Apex Talent Phalanx has been updated – Thunder Clap causes your next Shield Slam to unleash a wave of force, dealing Physical damage to all enemies in front of you, and reducing the damage they deal to you by 5% for 8 seconds (was 5 seconds).
New Talent: Devastating Focus – You focus on the target struck by your Devastator, dealing 20% additional Revenge damage to them. Only one target can have your focus at a time.
Revenge now deals damage to all targets in front of you.
Developers’ notes: This reverts Revenge functionality to match current 11.2 functionality.
Sweeping Revenge has been removed.
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
WARRIOR
Berserker Roar has been redesigned - Now modifies Berserker Shout, and its radius has been reduced to 12 yards (was 20) to match Berserker Shout’s radius.
USER INTERFACE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Added new art for the Midnight login screen.
Added new art for the Midnight credits screen.
Removed the “Show Friendly Buffs” option from the Personal Resource Display. The new External Defensives pane has reduced the need for this option.
Developers’ notes: There is a known issue where action bars may lose recent changes on logout. To prevent this, use /reload in chat after making any changes before logging out.
NEW ACCESSIBILITY FEATURE: COMBAT AUDIO ALERTS
Combat audio alerts have been added for reading your target’s name and announcing when your target dies, when combat starts, and when combat ends.
ADDON INTERFACE
Added a way to mark particular spellcasts and auras as non-secret. This will be used for various non-combat spells (e.g. profession spells, dragonriding spells) so addons can still access them.