World of Warcraft Shadowlands 9.05 Patch Update

            March 9th through the 11th will see a big update coming to World of Warcraft’s most recent expansion, Shadowlands. Shadowlands, unlike some of the more dubious WoW expansions, saw a lot more polish before its initial release and was generally better received as a result.  Due to the expansion being so popular, raid-ready level 60WoW accounts for sale have been in high demand.  That being said, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t places that the players and developers see that could use some fine-tuning. That’s what the patches for, to make the gameplay more enjoyable, and challenging, for fans looking to enjoy Shadowlands to its fullest. What was changed exactly? Well, we could cover everything, but we thought it was better to hit the highlights and leave the nitty-gritty to the mods on the blizzard forums.

            First off, let’s talk about companions for the covenants. A lot of the companions saw tweaks but the major changes pertain to the Necrolord and Night Fae companions. Necrolord companions were changed so they could deal the damage they were intended to more reliably, making them a bit more dangerous. Night Fae companions, on the other hand, were changed so they could be a little less fragile, so players can look forward to them being able to take more of a hit.

            The factions as a whole saw some quest and faction area fixes, generally to make the rewards and benefits more functional and fair. The big change players will have to keep an eye out for is the redesign of the Necrolord covenant ability. Fleshcraft now forms a shield of flesh and bone over three seconds and absorbs damage equal to 40% of your health over two minutes. While the shield is in effect, overall damage taken is reduced by 20%. A new passive effect too, that means moving next to enemy corpse absorbs their essence and reduces the cooldown for Fleshcraft by 1 second.

            When it comes to general classes, like with many patches, there are a lot of changes but we are going to focus on the biggest ones. First off, many of the classes are going to have the visuals around their abilities reduced for their allies so the effects will be less disorienting to other players. Generally, a good thing we think but not terribly game-changing. How about some power redesigns? Again these redesigns are for the Necrolord abilities, evidently, the devs thought this faction can still use a little bit of work. The Demon Hunter’s Covenant of the Flame now gives your damaging abilities a chance to call forth a demon from the Theater of Pain for 25 seconds.  Throw Glaive deals lethal damage to the demon which causes it to explode and damage nearby enemies and healing you for 30% of your maximum health. Pretty neat, in our opinion.

            The other Necrolord ability that saw a redesign is for the warrior class. The Conqueror’s Banner now allows you to brandish it and grant 400 Mastery and 30% increased movement speed to you and your 2 nearest allies and preventing movement speed from being reduced below 100%. The cooldown is 2 minutes, the duration is 15 seconds, and the Rage generation is 4 Rage per second for Arms and Protection, and 6 Rage per second for Fury. Sounds like some powerful buffs there.

            The final big character change, though this one isn’t covenant-related, is to the rogue. They have introduced a new passive for the rogue that you get at level 56 called Cut to the Chase. Cut to the Chase will allow Envenom to extend the duration of your Slice and Dice by up to 3 seconds per combo point spent. Interestingly enough the devs also removed Slice and Dice rank 2 from the class completely, most likely because the combination would be too powerful.

            All the classes and factions will also see a host of new Anima abilities within the Torghast, Tower of the Damned. These, combined with new difficulty mechanics to let you know how hard the section you and your allies are attempting, is meant to greatly increase your chances of success within the tower. Players were likely finding the towers set up a tad confusing and harder as a result.

            A small, but no less important addition, this patch will be seeing is to The Maw. The Maw will now feature an array of teleporters, so players who have been through the area will no longer have to cover the massive area in its entirety to revisit specific areas. Maybe not a huge deal, but we do love it when the devs make our lives just a little bit easier. Seems considerate to us.

            The last change we are going to talk about, and possibly the ones that have the player base the most excited, are the changes to the dungeons and the dungeon rewards. Specifically, a new currency is being added as a prize to be won in the Mythic Keystone Dungeons called Valor. Valor can be used to upgrade the equipment obtained in the Mythic Keystone Dungeon. New equipment upgrades are always cool. The only immediate downside of this change is that none of the equipment obtained before the patch can be upgraded, only equipment obtained since the patch’s release. While this can be a bit of a bummer since it makes you have to farm the Mythic Keystone Dungeons for stuff you already have, it’s probably for the power curve overall.

            There you have our highlights of patch 9.0.5 to Shadowlands. Nothing too drastic but we will keep our eye on some of the smaller fixes since sometimes they like to do a little more than intended. And that is generally when it gets really fun...or annoyingly broken. Either way, we tend to find out if it’s one or the other pretty quickly, too. Overall we are seeing a theme of higher reward returns on reoccurring events, which we think is a good trend. It means that the devs want to see the players return to these events and will invest in making sure they are fun. And when the devs care if we have fun,