Greetings my fellow Ownedcorenians. Today is the 126th OC Report. We actually have a bunch of interesting things to talk about regarding World of Warcraft. Hope everybody is staying healthy and getting prepared for Shadowlands.




Shadowlands Pre-Patch

The video above is the official Blizzard Shadowlands Pre-Expansion Survival Guide. The pre-patch comes out this upcoming reset so the 13th for NA and 14th for EU. There is a lot of changes coming in this pre-patch outside of just the Shadowlands themed content. There is going to be a massive scaling shift in World of Warcraft. All 120's will be losing corruption and corruption resistance along with being scaled down to level 50. It is ideal to make your Demon Hunters and Death Knights prior to this patch because you will get more levels after the scaling shift if the characters are made now compared to after. Along with the scaling is a brand new leveling system that allows you to level in any expansion that you so choose. Never got to level through Wrath of the Lich King properly? Heard the buzz about Grizzly Hills music? Well now you can actually see what all the fuss is about and you'll probably see many others there with you which would be a wonderful sight. One of the last major changes are class abilities. Every single class is getting back a bunch of abilities that will be baseline no matter your spec. I highly recommend checking out this guide here on WoWHead that is constantly updated with all the newest information for every class and spec going into Shadowlands. For many these are iconic abilities and it seems Blizzard will be going the approach of Class Identity over Spec Identity based on this change alone.


Classic WoW PvP Bracket Stacking nerfed.

In an official blue post by Blizzard they have confirmed that brackets will no longer be impacted by characters that have been deleted even if they had 15 honorable kills. To somebody not in the loop the way ranking works is based on a hidden thing called RP. Normally it's hidden but many addons and tools allow players these days to track your RP. You gain RP based on how much honor you got compared to the rest of your server. Certain thresholds of RP put you in certain brackets. For example you need to be in bracket 14 for 3 weeks in a row to hit rank 14. What many Classic WoW PvP players have been doing is expanding how many people are allowed in these brackets by running a bunch of level ones to a certain designated graveyard where a bunch of alliance await them to be killed. The level ones all get 15 honorable kills because that is how many it takes to be put into the PvP system. Any less than 15 is essentially 0. People were making level 1's, getting 15 hk's, deleting them, and repeat. There are full blown Discords that have servers helping each other expand their brackets. If somebody had 50 accounts they could expand the bracket at a very fast past by the thousands. Which in turn allows more people to push for rank 14 at the same time. Now though, with this change, the characters that are deleted no longer count to the bracket pool. Meaning if you have 50 accounts and 9 characters per account you can only expand the bracket by 450 without more help or accounts. 450 expansion might not even get you one more bracket 14 spot.

This change is going to cause a lot of current PvP rankers a lot of issues and force them to grind more honor per week. When the brackets are expanded by a lot usually you can set caps for each bracket that are quite low and totally depend on your server. With little to no bracket expansion all of these current rank 12's and 13's who expected to get a bracket 14 slot next week will now have to either sacrifice another week of ranking or break the bracket caps set by that servers ranking Discord. All in all this is the most Blizzard patch ever because most serious rankers ranked a year ago and abused this bug to obtain it when it mattered most. So why even fix it at all if you didn't fix it when it mattered the most? Seems a bit silly but Blizzard does this stuff all the time. Remember when Classic came out and people were 10 man raiding Scarlet Monastery and getting XP as if they were in a 5 man? Then Blizz fixed it so people who we're a little behind just became even more behind in leveling because all these 40's and 50's abused it and now these 20's and 30's can't do it. Same thing, typical Blizzard.


Naxx is officially on PTR

In an official blue post Blizzard has announced that Naxx is on the Classic PTR. With this patch will come some interesting changes outside of just Naxxramas becoming available.

• Being exalted with your Warsong Gulch faction now offers epic-quality leg gear.

- I think there's a piece or two that are close to BIS for warriors being added but nothing too crazy for people who are farming AQ40.

• Crafted nature resist pieces are now available with Cenarion Circle reputation.

- Basically pointless. NR has been overrated in Classic so far and only used on one fight in most competent guilds.

• Nature resist enchants for leg and head gear are now available from Zul’Gurub.

- Also basically moot but nice for the one fight you use NR to get a bit more.

• Several skill books for new skill ranks (Frost Ward, Shadow Ward, Flame Shock, Conjure Food, Eviscerate, Ferocious Bite) are obtainable.

- These are obtainable via dungeon drops and are actually quite rare. Some of these are more important than others obviously such as Conjure Food and Eviscerate. No more level 45 food will be amazing.

• There are now PvP objectives in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands.

- This a part of the pre-patch for Naxx. Much comes with it including some new items, an 18 slot bag, a ghetto TOEP/ZHC trinket for people without those, and a few other things.

• An Epic nature resist ring is available from a quest to kill an Elemental Lord in Cenarion Hold.

- I think you know how I feel about NR at this point

• The Argent Dawn token system offers a way for players to earn gear by turning in components at Light’s Hope Chapel.

- Gear mentioned above

Besides the stuff being added there are also some substantial bug fixes coming that will make many people happy.

• Resolved an issue that caused the Shaman talent Improved Weapon Totems to not apply its damage improvements to other players in the Shaman’s party.

- This is massive. In the beginning of the game most shaman went into enhance after resto up to NS instead of Mana Tide to get their melee more damage. Later on more toward BWL it was found out that these talents were only working for the shaman and not people in the party. This was clearly a bug and it took Blizzard forever to fix it but better late than never. Totem Twisting just got that much more powerful. It's a warriors game and we're all just along for the ride.

• Resolved an issue that caused a Hunter’s Auto Shot ability to occasionally experience a slight delay on recast if its cast was interrupted by Aimed Shot.

- I didn't know this was a bug but all the hunters I know are very excited because they can use all the boosts they can get. Hunters, if you don't know, do very low damage because things like Aimed Shot don't scale with their Ranged Attack Power for some odd reason in vanilla. So they pump in phase 1 and I say pump loosely but then everybody passes them and they aren't really high damage again until BC and beyond.

• Many helpful auras and buffs that improve Attack Power now properly apply to Ranged Attack Power.

- Also a massive hunter buff. This means Onyxia/Nefarian Head buffs and Rend should give hunters Ranged Attack Power now which once again is just a nice boost to help hunters out. Along with well itemized tier 3 gear hunters are shaping up to be really beefy in Phase 6.