Legion Beta Patch Notes
patch notes
May 12th by Rygarius
Welcome to the World of Warcraft Legion Beta! This is an early look at the patch notes for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion: Legion. If you’d like to participate in the testing process, be sure to opt-in to future beta tests from our Beta Profile page; check the box next to the games you're interested in testing.
Beta Reminder: Content in the Legion Beta Test are still in-development and details may be subject to change before release of the live game. Not all of the content listed may be available for testing or may only be available during a limited testing windows during the Beta. Keep an eye on the Beta forums for more information when specific tests may be taking place.
Table of Contents
World of Warcraft: Legion Beta Patch Notes
Updated: May 12, 2016.New Hero Class: Demon Hunter
Dominate your foes as a Demon Hunter, an elven outcast shunned for daring to wield the terrible powers of demons in order to combat the Legion. Exhibiting superior mobility, great martial prowess, and a preternatural ability to detect demons. Demon Hunters can tap into forbidden powers at times of dire need, metamorphosing into terrifying demonic forms. Demon Hunters may choose between two specializations:
- Havoc: This damage-dealing specialization allows you to demolish any who stand in your way with fiery demonic attacks that emphasize rapid melee strikes and battlefield mobility.
- Vengeance: This tanking specialization allows you to go toe-to-toe with even the most powerful demons, withstanding massive punishment by channeling the pain of battle and the souls of your enemies.
New Starting Experience for Demon Hunters
- Start your journey as a member of Illidan’s most elite disciples, an Illidari. Venture out from the Black Temple to lead an assault on the Legion world of Mardum in a desperate attempt to recover the key to defeating the Legion, even as the heroes of Azeroth march against the Black Temple and Illidan.
Level Cap Increased to 110
- Level cap for characters has been increased to 110.
New Continent: The Broken Isles
Brave the epicenter of the demon invasion—the Broken Isles, a land rich with ancient wonders. Explore lush forests, colossal mountain ranges, storm swept cliffs, and night elven cities older than human civilization. But beyond the Legion’s marauding army, native dangers lurk here too: twisted satyrs, savage drogbar, and cursed Kvaldir are but a few of the danger’s awoken by the return of the Burning Legion.
Explore the Broken Isles with areas such as:
- Azsuna
- Val’sharah
- Highmountain
- Stormheim
- Suramar
Wield Powerful Artifacts
Wield weapons of legend against the Burning Legion. Set out on quests to claim the myth-forged artifact weapons for your class, then grow their power as you continue their legend. Your choices will change their abilities, appearances, and carry them to new heights of power. Fashion your artifacts into the perfect instrument of battle for your specialization, and guide your faction in its most desperate hour.
- Earn Artifact Power by completing nearly any type of content, ranging from outdoor world questing to PvP.
- Spend Artifact Power to unlock powerful traits and customize your weapon’s capabilities.
- Find ancient relics, socketing them into your artifact to further augment your artifact and customize its traits.
Class Halls and Champions
Claim a Class Hall unique to your class. Recruit champions and armies into your order to send on missions and fight along your side on the Broken Isles.
Missions and Champions
- Class Campaigns: Unlock an epic class-specific story that takes your character through a variety of content in the expansion as you seek out new champions to join your order in the fight against the Legion.
- Combat Allies: Call upon mighty champions to assist you in combat either as bodyguards or through powerful call-down abilities.
- Order Advancement: Research improvements to your armies and champions as well as personal, class-themed perks.
New Dungeons
Ten new dungeons are available in Normal, Heroic, and Mythic difficulties.
- Assault on Violet Hold
- Black Rook Hold
- Court of Stars
- Darkheart Thicket
- Eye of Azshara
- Halls of Valor
- Maw of Souls
- Neltharion’s Lair
- The Arcway
- Vault of the Wardens
New Raids
Two new raids to challenge the mightiest heroes of Azeroth as you try to combat the Legion invasion and the effects it’s had on the native inhabitants of the Broken Isles.
- The Emerald Nightmare
- The Nighthold
New World Bosses
- Challenge yourself against ten new deadly world bosses located throughout the Broken Isles.
World Scaling
- Forge your own path through The Broken Isles. Level-up zones no longer have level ranges and instead creatures, foes, and rewards scale to your character level allowing you to play through those zones and their dungeons at any level. Zone and dungeon content will still be both challenging and rewarding at any level and allows you to play with friends seamlessly even if your levels are far apart. The max-level zone of Suramar awaits adventurers at the end of their journey.
World Quests
- World Quests send players out on a variety of quests such as defeating world bosses, world PvP, special dungeon activities, crafting for a profession, story-driven content and more.
- World Quests become available for characters that reach level 110 and are displayed on the map to see what's available in each zone.
- World Quests rotate throughout the day and over longer periods of time as well.
- Emissary quests become available upon reaching level 110 as well. Emissary quests are a daily call for help from a specific faction in Legion.
- Completing missions in support of a faction from which you have an emissary quest awards a lucrative cache of loot.
Revamped PvP Progression and Honor System
- Honor Points and Conquest Points have been removed as a currency. At level 110 players now receive Honor for completing PvP objectives or scoring Honorable Kills. Additionally, players at all levels who complete PvP battlegrounds are awarded a cache that can contain equipment, gold, and transmogrification tokens appropriate for their level along with artifact experience once they’ve obtained their artifact weapon.
- Earning Honor increases your Honor Level. Increasing your Honor level unlocks Honor Talents which can provide passive bonuses and new abilities that are enabled whenever players engage in PvP combat (including out in the world).
- Players at Honor Level 50 can receive a special reward (a mount, a title, a pet, or a toy) and can Prestige. Electing to Prestige will increase the player's Prestige Level by 1, unlock a special PvP badge, and reset their Honor Level.
- Items that were purchased using Honor or Conquest are now available for purchase with Marks of Honor that can be earned from Battlegrounds, Arenas, and Skirmishes.
- Learn more about upcoming PvP changes in our Legion PvP Preview.
Equalized PvP Gear
- Gear has been normalized in PvP combat. Characters entering a Skirmish Arena, Battleground, Rated Arena, Rated Battleground, or Ashran now receive an aura called Principles of War.
- Principles of War removes all stats gained from gear (Strength, Stamina, Haste, etc.), disables gear related bonuses (like trinket effects and set bonuses), and gives the character stats based on their specializations, and increases based on overall item level. The goal is to provide a much more finely tuned and balanced PvP experience.
Arenas
- The pennant attached to the back of characters now changes its appearance based on the player’s best rating in the Arena bracket.
Battlegrounds
- Characters below level 110 winning a Battleground are now awarded Crates of Battlefield Goods. The crate contains a piece of armor appropriate for the character’s level and specialization with a chance for the crate to contain additional rewards such as weapons or relics.
New Transmogrification Collections System: Appearances
- New Collection tab: Appearances
- Unlock new appearances by collecting Soulbound weapons and armor your character can equip.
- Unlocked appearances are account-wide and usable for transmogrification by other characters that can equip the item.
- When first logging into a character after Patch 7.0, the appearances of appropriate items in your bags, bank, and Void Storage are learned automatically. Additional appearances will be unlocked based on previously-completed quests.
- Transmogrifiers located in most major cities have been improved with additional features.
- Got a look that you like? Save the entire transmogrification set as an outfit. Create and swap between outfits at the Transmogrifier.
- Additionally, transmogrifications can now be associated with your current specialization. Your outfit automatically changes when switching specializations if you so desire.
- Added a new option to hide shoulders.
- The option to hide helmets, cloaks, and shoulders has been moved into the transmogrification system.
New Boosted Character Experience
- Newly boosted characters will receive a lesson on the basics of how to play their new class, as they embark on an airship heading towards the Broken Shore.
Class Trials
- Try out a new level 100 character before consuming a Boost with the new Class Trials! Class Trials allows a player to create a new level 100 character, learn how to play the class, and get to experience what it feels like to play the class and their artifact weapon.
- At the end of the trial experience the character is saved but locked. Players can use a character Boost to unlock the character and keep the character permanently.
Raids and Dungeons
Mythic Dungeons and Mythic Challenges
- Mythic difficulty is available for all Legion dungeons. Players who complete a Mythic dungeon may earn a Mythic Keystone pointing to a random Legion dungeon, enabling access to progressively more challenging levels of difficulty, with commensurate rewards.
- Completing a Mythic Keystone dungeon within the specified time limit awards a higher-level Keystone, pointing to a new random Legion dungeon, and allowing its holder to access an even higher difficulty and reward level.
- At higher Mythic levels, random modifiers are introduced, transforming the rules of the dungeon and the way you play to provide a dynamic experience.
- At the beginning of each weekly instance reset period, players receive a special reward based on the highest Mythic level completed in the prior week.
Legacy
- Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj now resets daily instead of every 3 days.
Items and Itemization
Itemization
- In an effort to reduce the amount of gear swapping between specializations, the following changes have been made.
- Legion cloaks, rings, and items worn on the neck are no longer tied to a specific primary stat, and will remain relevant between specializations.
- Spirit and Bonus Armor have been removed.
- Multistrike has been removed. Items that had multistrike have had it replaced with another secondary stat.
- Trinkets obtained from Raids, PvP, and world drops in Warlords were overtuned and have been brought back to intended power levels.
- Set bonuses for item sets from expansions prior to Warlords of Draenor have been deactivated, though the text describing their former function still remains.
Legendary Items
- Legendary items drop from places all throughout Legion. In addition to stats, these items confer powerful effects and modify abilities. Only a limited number of them can be equipped at a time.
- Check out the new Loot tab in the Dungeon Journal to see which Legendary items are out there for you!
Character Changes
Specialization System Changes
- Characters can now change between any of their specializations at most any time for a progressive gold cost. Action bar configurations are saved for each specialization. As a result, Dual Specialization has been removed.
- Characters can queue up as any role that is available to their class and will automatically switch to the suitable specialization when entering the Dungeon, Raid, Battleground, or Arena without any gold cost. For example, a paladin might be questing as Retribution but queue up in Dungeon Finder as a Tank. When the paladin enters the dungeon, they will automatically switch to Protection.
Updates to Combat Visuals and Audio
- Updated and improved on the animations, visual effects, and audio on core combat interactions like auto-attacks as well as many melee class abilities.
Talent System Changes
- Players are now able to switch talents while out of combat without the need for reagents.
Glyph System Changes
- The Glyph panel has been removed from the game. Some minor glyphs that had a cosmetic effect that does not apply to a specific spell have been converted into cosmetic items that provide the same effects as before.
- Some minor glyphs that made cosmetic alterations to a specific spell have been added to the spell itself in the spellbook.
Draenor Perks Removed
- Draenor Perks have been removed from the game.
Armor Changes
- Hunters and Shaman can now equip Mail armor from level 1 (down from level 40).
- Warriors and Paladins can now equip Plate armor from level 1 (down from level 40).
- New Mail and Plate reward options have been added to low level quests.
Racial Abilities
Human
- Every Man for Himself now removes all Stun effects and shares a 30-second cooldown with other items or abilities that have a similar effect.
Class Changes
All classes and specializations have undergone changes to abilities and mechanics. Check out our class preview logs for a better understanding on the thought process behind these changes.
Collections
- Many new mounts and battle pets to collect!
Toy Box
- A number of items with novel effects have been converted for inclusion in the Toy Box.
- Orb of Deception now lets the character retain features like armor that’s worn when transforming.
- New toy: Soft Foam Sword, sold by Jepetto Joybuzz. The toy mortally wounds (but does not kill) an enemy of trivial difficulty.
Professions
- Increase profession skills to an increased cap of 800.
- Hundreds of new recipes and patterns have been added.
- Profession content is more closely tied to the world. Many of recipes will be learned by completing quests, finding hidden trainers, and going on adventures out in the Broken Isles.
- Recipes can now have multiple ranks. As you become more skilled in your profession, you will learn to craft or gather more efficiently.
- Equipment limits on the amount of crafted gear that can be worn have been removed.
- The Obliterum Forge, unlocked with a questline at level 110, will allow players to destroy their crafted gear and obtain Obliterum. Obliterum, in turn, can be used to make crafted gear more powerful.
Inscription
- Major glyphs, along with many minor glyphs, have been converted or removed from the game.
- Scribes can now craft Vantus Runes, a consumable item that allows a player to perform more effectively against one particular raid boss each week.
UI
- Character nameplates have been reworked and have been upgraded to show class resources. Players may select a larger version of these nameplates from within the Interface Options menu.
- Enemy nameplates now provide additional information on status effects.
- Added class resource bars that display directly underneath your character.
- The character sheet has been trimmed down, though fully verbose stats are still available via the API.
- Interface options have changed and been further streamlined.
- Tab targeting logic has been reworked, and should now behave in a more consistent and predictable manner.
- A buff icon has been added to make it easier to tell when a character has XP gain disabled.
Account
- The maximum amount of gold that can be held at once has been increased to 9,999,999 gold. Guild bank maximum has also been increased to 9,999,999 gold.
- Maximum number of characters on a realm has increased to 12.
Graphics Engine
- Maximum draw distance has been extended greatly for Legion content.
- 5 additional levels of graphics presets have been added with 3 above the previous ‘Ultra’ setting.
- More advanced rendering techniques for fog have been added.
- Modern techniques for rendering color and other post-effects have been added.