Season of Discovery Phase 7 PTR Update - Jan 22 2025

Forum Avatar
WoW Classic Game Producer
#1 - Jan. 22, 2025, 9:49 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Greetings,

The WoW Classic team wanted to give a quick update on the status of Phase 7 PTR testing and give you an idea of some changes we have planned for Naxxramas, as well as some clarifications on adjustments we are planning for the Sanctified gear system coming in Phase 7.

Naxxramas Testing

First off, we want to confirm that we do plan to do another round of Naxxramas PTR testing. We are targeting mid-next week (around Jan 29th) to open the raid again, likely letting it stay up through the weekend of Jan 31. It’s possible we may need to change our testing plans, we hope to lock in the exact dates for this test period very soon and let everyone know here when things are finalized.

The primary focus of this next test is to review some changes we plan to make to the Military Quarter, which include, but likely aren’t limited to, the following:

  • We’ll be adding a mechanism to the Instructor Razuvious encounter that makes it a bit friendlier to raid groups that don’t have multiple priests.
  • We’ll be adjusting the Four Horsemen encounter mechanics to be friendlier to smaller groups or groups with fewer than 4 (or 8!) tanks.
  • We plan to fix a bug with the “orders” mechanic in the Military Quarter that was causing it to affect more than 3 players per raid group at a time.
  • We additionally plan to add additional direct benefits for successfully completing the Military Wing mechanic when it occurs.

Sanctified Gear

We’ve iterated on the Sanctified Gear system based on our internal observations and the excellent feedback provided by players. Here’s a look at what we are changing:

  • We are capping the number of pieces of Sanctified Gear that will contribute to the power bonuses to 8 pieces (was 12).
    • We felt that this would allow more build diversity and encourage you to mix and match additional set pieces and not worry about losing out on the massive power you’d gain from those 4 additional pieces.
  • The power gained per piece of Sanctified armor has been increased to compensate for the adjustment above.
  • The Seal of the Dawn trinket line that provides the bonus inside of Naxxramas, will now also count as a Sanctified item.
  • The Undead Slaying sets will now provide a bonus of +2 to your current Sanctified (down from 3) for wearing the set.

This means if you wore 3 pieces of the Undead Slaying set and your Trinket, that takes care of 6/8 of your Sanctified items.

Seal of the Dawn Progression Clarifications

We also want to provide some clarity on the upgrades for the Seal of the Dawn Trinket line and alleviate some of the concerns we’re hearing when it comes to grinding and alts. So below is an explanation of the system.

  • Killing bosses inside of Naxxramas will drop Remnants of Valor, which can be looted by every player in the raid and are used to upgrade the trinket.
  • It takes more Remnants of Valor to upgrade the trinket each rank.
    • E.g. it takes more to go from rank 9 to 10 than from rank 4 to 5.
  • Bosses killed on higher difficulties provide more Remnants of Valor.
  • There is a quest outside of Naxxramas that can be done repeatedly with no limit on it to gain Remnants of Valor.
    • This quest will will provide a small number of Remnants of Valor but will increase the amount it gives every few weeks, allowing players to catch up faster if they miss weeks or start late.
  • The Trinket Upgrades are gated, and you cannot progress past a certain rank of the trinket until a certain week has passed.
    • E.g. you can farm 1,000 Remnants of Valor, but you can only spend 450 (example number) of them and upgrade your trinket from Rank 1 to Rank 2 and cannot upgrade the Trinket again until Week 2 (example week, final cadence is TBD) of Naxxramas has passed.
    • This cap on the Trinket is global and not personalized for that character. So if you are an alt or player that comes into Naxxramas near the end of the phase – if the global Trinket Rank cap is Rank 9 - you can work on the repeatable quest (with its increased rate of Remnants at that point in time) and go all the way from Rank 1 to Rank 9 in a single week.
  • Remnants of Valor are Bind on Account and can be traded to your alt characters.
    • If you find yourself with more Remnants of Valor than you need on your main and have already capped your trinket for that week, you can send them to your alts.

We’ll update these forums with update notes that have a bit more specific information around the nature of the changes next week when Naxxramas re-opens on the PTR. Thank you again for the testing and feedback so far!

Forum Avatar
WoW Classic Game Producer
#23 - Jan. 27, 2025, 9:02 p.m.
Blizzard Post

Greetings Again,

We wanted to take a quick moment and note an additional adjustment we’ve made to the Sanctified System since we posted the update above.

Seal of the Dawn Item Adjustments

  • The Seal of the Dawn trinket is no longer an equippable trinket. It is instead an item with an on-use effect that you can keep in your inventory and use as desired.
  • Using the item gives you a buff that will confer the benefits of your Seal of the Dawn, e.g. granting you the power bonus based on the number of Sanctified items you have equipped, and allows you to gather scourgestones.
  • The buff on your buff bar will have a numerical representation of what “rank” of the Seal of the Dawn buff you have active.
  • The buff you get when using this item persists through death so you should not need to re-enable the buff every time your character dies.
  • Different ranks of the Seal of the Dawn buff do not stack with each other, so you should only ever need to hold onto the highest rank Seal of the Dawn item you’ve earned and the older ones can safely be deleted from your inventory.
    • You are also welcome to keep the lower ranked items and use a lower rank of the buff should you choose to do so for whatever reason.
  • Lastly, once you have obtained a new rank of your current seal of the dawn, you can obtain the other variants (Tank, Healer, etc.) for free. No need to level those up in the same way.

image (26)

We’ve seen quite a bit of feedback that it felt like a bit of a bummer to lose a coveted trinket slot to this item. This adjustment feels a lot better to still grant the benefit but not take up a trinket slot. We may make additional iterative adjustments between now and when the raid launches and we really appreciate the feedback we’ve gotten so far.

Seal of the Dawn Buff Limits

Additionally, after a lot of discussion, we are going to be introducing an adjustment that will cap the effectiveness of the Seal of the Dawn buff depending on the number of wings of Naxxramas that are empowered.

Examples (final values TBD):

  • If you have zero quarters empowered, your Seal of the Dawn buff may only grant additional sanctified power up to rank 2
  • If you have two quarters empowered, your Seal of the Dawn buff may only grant additional sanctified power up to rank 4
  • Etc.

The main concerns we are hoping to address is the case where a raid group takes a full 40 players that all have the maximum rank Seal of the Dawn and they do not empower any quarters to keep the raid at the lowest difficulty setting. In this scenario a boss could die incredibly quickly (in under 10 seconds, in some cases), leading to an unsatisfying raid experience, and potentially even causing bugs in the encounter if scripted actions are bypassed or break. This level of power could also enable very small groups of 5 Players or less to take on bosses by themselves, which is not intended behavior.

Ultimately, the intent of the system is to allow you to progress your power upward and enable you to take on increasingly difficult (and rewarding!) challenges that come as you empower more quarters of Naxxramas as the weeks go by. After some time has passed you will gain the power needed to be able to take on a fully empowered Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad with additional mechanics.

Progressing your Seal of the Dawn should still make you feel much more powerful in the content you are already comfortably clearing, but we are simply putting a limit on how much extra power can be utilized in the lesser difficulties from the Seal of the Dawn buff itself.

This Week’s PTR

We hope to have both of these adjustments testable on when Naxxramas goes live again on PTR later this week. We also plan to add the Tier 3 sets to vendors so that you can test the new set bonuses as well. We’ll provide a post in the Season of Discovery Phase 7 PTR forums with full update notes around the time that Naxxramas unlocks on PTR.

Thank you!