Developer Log - September 2024

Behind the scenes as ever the Project Epoch team is steadfastly working towards a release as soon as humanly possible. However one downside of this is that the primary focus has been entirely on bugs, polish, tuning and wrapping things up with a neat little bow.

While these monthly logs have gotten less and less visual due to that we look forward to giving you these updates on key challenges we've faced and accomplishments along the way.

General State

When we last gave an update we stated we had 2,599 issues still open across a broad spectrum of the game. As of this post this now stands at 2,275. Meaning that the QA & Bug Triage team alongside our developers have been able to close 324 issues with a further 44 in the Testing state awaiting validation of fixes done by our developers. We've been updating the internal realm with new fixes and improvements on a bi-weekly basis and are happy with the amount of progress that has been made in that time.

This is of course a slowing of things however that is because issues are getting more and more granular. We are happy that the biggest issues are being tackled swiftly and a majority of what remains are lower priority or cosmetic.

Importantly we are now churning through some of our most critical core issues and feel we are approaching the home stretch.

Core Crafting

Last month we announced we are recruiting for a paid core developer position. This spurred on interest from both new core developers and experienced ones. This has allowed us to kill a number of key core issues such as:

Using your Hearthstone while on a transport should no longer be able to send you falling to your death.
Corpses no longer disappearing on instance reset.
Character creation name collision issues that could have broken many aspects of the game.
New GM commands for investigating and teleporting to players instance id's.
Major performance improvements to support many players in a singular location.
Pooled resources such as mining nodes should no longer expire over time.

Our fork of TrinityCore has now been synced up with the upstream branch bringing in around 7 months of core changes which required some hefty conflict resolution on our end. This is now deployed to our internal realm and is going through validation.

We wanted to express a heartfelt thank you to the Duskhaven team who we have been collaborating with to tackle down core issues as both projects use TS-WoW and TrinityCore as a base.

Loot, Glorious Loot.

Not everything we've been doing in the background over these months is solely bug fix related. Our intent was always to work on loot fully between the end of Beta 3 and Launch. With our extra time needed on bugs this freed up Kes to go ham on loot additions for end game dungeons and raids. We are happy to say that with the exception of a handful of items that require fancy scripting this work is now complete.

This means that you will find more than 400 new pieces of armor and weapons across almost all bosses.

Class Is In Session

While classes are, and always will be, an ongoing design and development process Eredun wanted to make sure you were kept up to date on the final classes that we have not covered post Beta 3. With that in mind below you can find the latest iterations of the Shaman and Warlock classes.

Shaman

Master of the elements, ancestral speaker, and most importantly of all, that person that makes the warrior sometimes hit an extra time. Shamans are an excellent class in Burning Crusade, but the class design has always left people wanting more.

The changes below are changes that have occurred after Beta 3. For previous Shaman changes, see the pinned message in the #Shaman channel in Discord and our October developer log.

The changes below do not include bug fixes or damage/healing numerical buffs/nerfs.

Molten Blast (Rank 1) has been removed, all other ranks were adjusted to accommodate this. This now means that Molten Blast is first learned at level 14, up from 8, making it after the level shaman obtain Flame Shock and their Fire Totems.
Elemental Focus's Clearcasting proc now also affects Fire Totems.

Developer's note: This was a bug, but there was some positive reception towards it and it seems like a fun addition, so it was cleaned up and implemented intentionally as a feature.

The elemental shaman talents Fire and Lightning Mastery and Call of Thunder have swapped places in the talent tree.
Sentry Totem has been overhauled. Instead of right-clicking the aura to swap between Shaman Sight and Totem Sight, you now re-cast the Sentry Totem spell, doing so will not incur the mana cost. Sentry Totem now also grants nearby party and raid members minor stealth detection, and you gain additional stealth detection when you see through the totem. Sentry Totem also no longer puts you into Totem Sight immediately when placed.
The Earth's Grasp talent now also reduces the chance that your spells will be pushed back on damage by 25%/50% while you have any Earth Totem out.
The Ancestral Knowledge talent has been overhauled and now increases your Intellect by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%.
The Elemental Shaman talent, Eye of the Storm, has been removed.
Elemental Shaman have received a new talent in the place of Eye of the Storm called Rolling Thunder. This talent causes your Lightning critical hits to have a 33%/66%/100% chance to give your Lightning Shield an additional charge, up to 9 charges. Excess charges beyond 9 automatically launch a Lightning Shield orb attack at the enemy you critically struck. Earth Shock can also be used to consume up to 1/2/3 surplus Lightning Shield (meaning only charges beyond the default 3) at the enemy every 2 seconds for up to 2/4/6 seconds.
Lightning Shield has received a new visual effect when it damages an enemy.
Shamanistic Rage has received a large change to accommodate both weapon type play styles. It now generates mana based on your attack power and your weapon speed, further modified if you are dual wielding. It now also has a 100% proc chance and is no longer based on Procs Per Minute.
Water Walking is now considered Rank 1 and a second rank of Water Walking has been added somewhere in the world. This new rank will cause Water Walking to not be cancelled by shapeshifting, allowing the shaman to use Ghost Wolf form while water walking. The tooltip of Rank 1 Water Walking has been updated to clarify this.

Below you will find the Shaman Dungeon Set 2 sets (T 0.5).

Warlock

Felguard? What Felguard? I don't know anyone named Felguard!

The changes below are changes that have occurred after Beta 3. For previous Warlock changes, see the pinned message in the #Warlock channel in Discord and our October developer log.

The changes below do not include bug fixes or damage/healing numerical buffs/nerfs.

Soul Shards now stack to 3 (down from 5), and they are now Unique(99).

Developer's note: Previously we updated Soul Shards to stack to 5, and while this was a nice Quality of Life change on paper, it greatly devalued Soul Shard bags and made it easier to hoard extreme amounts of shards. This adjustment means you can have only 33 stacks of Soul Shards on you at a time, which any Soul Shard bag can hold. This should also help prevent Warlocks from having a full inventory from fully preparing.

Seed of Corruption no longer requires a Soul Shard to cast, but its cast time has been increased by 0.5 seconds and the amount of damage requires to pop the seed has increased by 68%.
Improved Corruption no longer gives Seed of Corruption a chance to refund a soul shard. It now decreases the cast time of Seed of Corruption by 0.1 second per rank, up to 0.5 seconds.

Developer's note: The previous Seed of Corruption change, making it require a Soul Shard, was frankly not fun. But we still want to incentivize the use of other AoE damage spells. Seed of Corruption remains a very strong ability despite these changes, but it should bring it closer in line.

Assisting a Warlock with a Ritual of Souls or a Ritual of Summoning now has a new visual effect to show that you are indeed helping.
Unstable Afflicition has seen a few large buffs.

Developer's note: Numerical changes are not typically in these developer logs as this is not a complete changelog, but the buffs to this spell are significant enough to warrant mentioning as it has a large impact on gameplay for Affliction Warlocks.

Shadow Embrace is now a 3 point talent, down from 5. The damage reduction per rank is now 1%/3%/5%.
Summon Felguard has returned to the Demonology capstone.
Demon Portal has been removed... for now.

Developer's note: Discussion about these two spells has been never-ending since the previous changes were announced. Demon Portal simply needs a lot more time in the oven, and there is room to bring it back in a very thematically appropriate way in the future. As for Felguard, it does still suffer from the previously stated issues, but this is something we hope to address over time in a different way instead of outright removing it.

Demonic Empowerment has received various changes to lean towards improving the throughput of a pet rather than the utility of the pet. It now also affects Infernals, Doomguards, and Enslaved Demons. These effects and changes to existing effects are listed below, if the demon is not listed it has not been changed.
Demonic Empowerment - Imp: Now increases the imp's crit chance with Firebolt by 100% for 8 seconds, and makes Firebolt free for that time.
Demonic Empowerment - Succubus: Now gives the Succubus 75% Melee and Ranged dodge chance and 10% increased damage for 8 seconds.
Demonic Empowerment - Felguard: Now gives the Felguard 15% increased damage for 10 seconds. The stun component is unchanged.
Demonic Empowerment - Infernal: The infernal goes immune to all attacks and spells for 6 seconds.
Demonic Empowerment - Doomguard: The doomguard casts Shadow Bolt Volley, dealing damage to all nearby enemies.
Demonic Empowerment - Enslaved Demon: The demon takes damage and has increased attack and casting speed.

Developer's note: Yes the tooltip of Demonic Empowerment is as long as you think it is.

Empowered Corruption's Seed of Corruption effect has changed, and now decreases the damage required to break Seed of Corruption by 10%/20%/30%.
The spell scaling coefficient of Drain Soul has been slightly reduced to 57%. It was around 61% previously.

Developer's note: There are other tuning adjustments besides this one. The reason why this one is being mentioned is because the previous number was mentioned in a previous developer log.

Succubus' Lash of Pain is now deals its damage over 6 seconds. This change to a periodic effect means it will no longer eat stacks of Shadow Vulnerability from Improved Shadow Bolt. Overall damage dealt by this ability should be the same.
Rain of Fire can now critically hit.
Felhunters have received a "new" ability (from Wrath), Shadow Bite. It behaves the same as it did during Wrath of the Lich King, and it is obtained from Demon Trainer grimoires just like other demon spells.
Felhunter Paranoia is now a passive effect, to ensure that Felhunters do not have too many abilities to fit on their action bar.
Affliction has received a new talent, Improved Shadow Bite. This causes your Felhunter's Shadow Bite to grant the Felhunter 3%/6% of its maximum mana. This talent is located on Tier 5, next to Curse of Exhaustion.

Developer's note: This is intended to synergize with Dark Pact.

Shadowfury's stun now lasts 3 seconds, up from 2 seconds.
Destruction has received a returning talent, Demonic Sacrifice. This is now the capstone of the Destruction tree, and functions the same as it did in 2.4.3.
Shadowfury, being kicked from its home, has moved to row 5, next to Ruin. The damage of the spell has been updated to reflect this major level change and it now has a total of 4 ranks from 30 to 60.
Improved Firebolt now also reduces the mana cost of Firebolt by 20%/40%, and gives your Imp's Firebolt critical hits a 50%/100% chance to increase the damage of your next single target Fire spell by 10%.
Infernals summoned by Inferno now have Immolation Aura, which deals damage to all enemies near the Infernal.
Curse of Tongues, Curse of Exhaustion, Curse of Agony, and Curse of Doom are now known as Banes. A warlock can have one Bane and one Curse up on a single target at a time.

Developer's note: In Cataclysm when Banes were introduced, it only affected Doom and Agony. For the sake of PvP balance, our version of Banes includes Tongues and Exhaustion, so players cannot have Tongues/Exhaustion and Agony up at the same time. These Banes are still considered Curse effects for the purposes of Remove Curse spells.

Removed Curse of Tongues (Rank 2).
Amplify Curse is now named Amplify Bane and now also affects Bane of Tongues, increasing its effect by 10% (This makes it match the value it used to have at Rank 2).

Below you will find the Warlock Dungeon Set 2 (T 0.5), which has received some new changes since the last time it was shown off. The 8pc effect was moved to 6pc, and the 4pc and 8pc effects were overhauled.

Community Shoutouts

Community member Ashnagarr provided us a new texture for a Stromgarde Warhorse. We do not know yet if it will be made into a mount, but we wanted to showcase this excellent art and thank him for it, along with showing an image of the mount in-game on the existing NPC Lieutenant Valorcall!

Test When?

We feel we need another month, approximately, focused on class bugs before we consider letting you all in for another testing session. We are itching to let you back in but want to ensure that there is meaningful improvements over our Beta 3 state. Stay tuned for more info.