Greetings!

The Wrath of the Lich King Public Test Realm has been updated with a new build. Below you’ll find this week’s testing focus and information on additional bug fixes and adjustments.

Build: 49563
May 11th 2023

Testing Focus

Titan Rune Dungeons – Defense Protocol Beta

The new difficulty of Titan Rune Dungeons, “Defense Protocol Beta” will be available for testing on Friday May 12th at 20:00 CEST.
- Please note that the Nerubian family of dungeons which includes Azjol-Nerb and Ahn’kahet, the Old Kingdom are not available for testing at this time. We hope to be able to make these dungeons available for testing early next week.
To initiate Defense Protocol Beta, your group will need to interact with the Mysterious Device at the entrance of a heroic dungeon, select the Defense Protocol Beta option from the gossip text. All five members of the party will need to channel on the object until the cast bar completes, and then Defense Protocol Beta will be active.
With Defense Protocol Beta active, the creatures and bosses within the dungeon will have a variety of dangerous new effects, as well as additional health and damage.
Bosses killed with Defense Protocol Beta active will award loot from the 10-player version of Ulduar.
The final boss of every Defense Protocol Beta dungeon will also award a new currency: Sidereal Essence.
- Each final boss will award a single Sidereal Essence to each group member.
- Sidereal Essences may be exchanged for rewards from 10-player Hard mode Ulduar gear at the Animated Constellation vendor in Dalaran.
- The Animated Constellation can be found with the other emblem vendors in the Silver Enclave and Sunreaver’s Sanctuary.
- Please note that the Sidereal Essence prices for each item listed in the previous PTR build were placeholder, and the prices have been adjusted in this week’s build.
The satchel awarded from the final boss of the daily heroic will now drop additional Emblems of Triumph when Defense Protocol Beta is active.

Additional Bug Fixes and Gameplay Adjustments

Spells and Abilities

A new minor glyph has been added to the game: Glyph of Shattering throw.
- Your shattering throw is now instant and may be used in any stance, but no longer removes invulnerabilities and cannot be used on players or player-controlled targets.
- Developer’s Note: This glyph is being added to smooth out the usage of one of the clunkier raid utility cooldowns in Wrath Classic. The usage of Shattering Throw was often a strict DPS loss for Warriors as you would need to change stances and lose your pooled rage, and using it had a cast time which left the warrior immobile and vulnerable. The usage of this raid cooldown should now feel significantly more natural without most of the drawbacks and should not impact the usage of Shattering Throw in PvP at all.
Death Knight - Fixed several additional issues with Dancing Rune Weapon:
- Glyph of Death Strike now properly increases the damage of Dancing Rune Weapon’s Death Strike.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now correctly inherits the weapon damage of the wielder for special attacks.
- Dancing Rune Weapon now gains a benefit from the Improved Icy Touch talent.
Fixed an issue that caused On Next Hit melee attacks to disable the spell queue window.
Mana burns are now properly mitigated by resilience.
Mage – Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause the mage to disconnect from the game when using Blink while moving on the surface of water with a water-walking ability.
Priest - Fixed an issue that caused the Shadowfiend to occasionally break Crowd Control when summoned and to incorrectly place nearby players that are not the Shadowfiend’s active target into combat.

User Interface

Usuri Brightcoin in the Dalaran sewers has gotten significantly better at multitasking and can now exchange multiple emblems in one transaction.
Fixed a game crash that occurred when viewing the tooltip for Meeting Stones on German Language clients.
Fixed an issue where some settings in the Options menu would not take effect immediately upon being adjusted.
The raid difficulty banner icon above the minimap will now properly display raid size and difficulty information when you are in a Wrath of the Lich King Raid.

Art and Environment

Heroic Raid portals are now correctly displaying the very awesome and heavy metal 3d Skull asset. Brutal.
Fixed an issue that occasionally caused pets to become stuck in the entrance tube in the Dalaran Arena.

Thank you!

Build: 49442
May 4th 2023

Testing Focus
Trial of the Crusader

The Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 and 25 player raids will be available for testing starting Friday May 5 at 20:00 CEST and will remain available until Monday May 8 at 19:00 CEST.
To access the Raid you will need to travel to northeastern Icecrown and enter the raid dungeon via the portal at the Argent Tournament Grounds.
To facilitate testing, we have re-enabled character copy for players to copy their live characters, and starter level 80 characters may be created using the available Templates. Please note that vendors have not been updated with Ulduar loot for this testing period.
- Developer’s Note: While we do typically provide gear options from the current raid tier when performing tests on future raids, for Trial of the Crusader we felt that it would be a more accurate a realistic test if we relied on live characters copied with their actual gear. While some players may be fully equipped with hard mode gear from Ulduar, most will not. Adding all of the best gear to the vendor could significantly impact the data we are able to get from this testing period. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
Trial of the Crusader (Normal Mode) share a lockout with Trial of the Grand Crusader (Heroic Mode), but you may dynamically swap from Normal to Heroic and back again within the same raid size.
- For example, if your raid group clears the raid up through Faction Champions on Heroic Mode, you may swap to Normal mode and complete the instance on Normal.
- You may also do this difficulty swapping on a per-boss basis. Using the example above, you may clear up through Faction Champions on Heroic, then swap to Normal for the Twin Valkyr encounter, and then swap back to Heroic for the Anub’arak encounter.
- Please do note that in order to be eligible for Tribute to Insanity and the additional tribute chest and rewards, you must do the entire Trial of the Grand Crusader raid on Heroic Difficulty in that same lockout.
- 10 Player and 25 player versions of the raid are still separate lockouts and do not impact one another at all.
- The requirement to have cleared Trial of the Crusader before attempting Trial of the Grand Crusader has been removed.

Onyxia’s Lair

The Level 80 version of Onyxia’s Lair raid is available for testing now and will remain open for the duration of the current PTR testing period.
The level 80 version of Onyxia’s Lair is now the default version of the raid. However, players may speak to Zidormi outside of Onyxia’s Lair to gain a “time travelling” buff that enables access to the level 60 classic version of the Raid.
To remove this buff and access the level 80 version again, simply speak to Zidormi again to remove it.

Argent Tournament

The Argent Tournament construction has been completed! All new quests and dailies are now available at this hub in northeastern Icecrown.

Titan Rune Dungeons – Defense Protocol Beta

This content is not yet available for testing but is coming soon.

Isle of Conquest

This content is not yet available for testing but is coming soon.

Bug Fixes and Gameplay Adjustments

Spells and Abilities

The so-called “DoT Munching” behavior most readily noticeable in Deep Wounds and Ignite has been resolved.
Fixed an issue that caused spells with Equipped Item requirements to not be removed when the player no longer meets the requirements of the spell.
- Developer’s note: A notable example of this is a warrior swapping to a shield to cast Spell Reflection, and then immediately unequipping the shield. With this fix the spell reflection aura is removed after the shield is removed.
Meta Gems may no longer be swapped in combat.
Resolved an Issue that allowed players to keep themselves and enemies in combat indefinitely by repeatedly casting buff effects on a player-controlled pet, even after the pet has gone into passive mode.
Shaman - Fixed an issue that caused the Earthgrab effect from the Shaman talent Storm, Earth, and Fire to not respect diminishing returns.
Mage – Fixed an issue causing the absorb effect from Sacred Shield to not be gained when gained by mages using the Spell Steal ability.
Mage – Fixed an issue causing Frostfire Bolt to always remove Fireball! if you have the mage tier 8 4-piece bonus.
Warlock – Fixed an issue causing Unstable Affliction to not be affected by Resilience.
Warlock – Fixed a visual issue with Rain of Fire.
Rogue – Resolved an issue that allowed Rogues to maintain combo points on a target after gaining them from Honor Among Thieves, and then swapping to a different spec that does not have Honor Among Thieves talented.
Rogue – Resolved an issue that caused Rogues to be knocked out of Stealth when using Slice and Dice with an enemy affected by Vigilance.
Druid – The previous adjustments specifically to Faerie Fire (Feral) and Omen of Clarity procs that were outlined here have been reverted. This implementation has been replaced with a new Glyph of Omen of Clarity major glyph which grants the same effect, causing Faerie Fire (Feral) to always proc Omen of Clarity
- Developer’s Note: This is going to be an extremely small loss in damage for the druid for replacing an existing glyph, but the previous adjustments resulted in a larger than intended damage increase for Feral DPS, so this helps to retain the benefits of that adjustment but does so at the cost of a Major Glyph slot instead.
Death Knight – Fixed several issues with Dancing Rune Weapon:
- Resolved an issue causing the version of Death Coil cast by Dancing Rune Weapon to do base damage and inherit no stats from the Death Knight.
- Resolved an issue where Dancing Rune Weapon was not mimicking the Slow Effect of Chains of Ice.
- Resolved an issue preventing the correct version of Death Knight abilities to be used by Dancing Rune Weapon.
- Resolved an issue causing the melee damage done by Dancing Rune Weapon to be incorrect. The damage done will now be much closer to 50% of the Death Knight’s damage, with some variation due to exact gear configurations such as equipped weapon speed.

User Interface

The Target of Target frame is now properly showing debuffs.
Fixed an issue where items unequipped using the equipment manager have multiple incorrect interactions when a Quiver container is not in the final bag slot.
Fixed a bug where targets that were automatically acquired after the player is attacked are dropped when the player moves out of melee range of the attacking enemy target.
Fixed an issue where pets that are resurrected in a raid group show up with a solid black health bar in the default raid frames.

Art and Environment

The goblins responsible for the theft of the water in The Battle for Wintergrasp epic battleground have been apprehended and the missing water has been replaced.
The minimap on the top level of Drak’tharon Keep is no longer displaying grey, untextured boxes where the exterior terrain should be.
Resolved an issue preventing pets from pathing into certain areas of the Ruins of Lordaeron arena map.

Raids and Dungeons

Noth the Plaguebringer no longer takes his loot with him to the Twisting Nether when he is killed at the same moment he teleports to his balcony for the intermission add phase.
Fixed an issue that caused the Yogg-Saron encounter to become stuck in Phase 1 if players touch a cloud too quickly after defeating General Vezax.
Fixed an issue where XT-002 Deconstructor could become unlootable if the boss is killed while a Life Spark is evading.
Fixed an issue where the Frost Orb spell impact animation would persist after Hodir’s Fury is used during the Flame Leviathan encounter.

Quests

Fixed an issue causing Orgrimmar guards to attack the Summoned Incubus during the Warlock quest “The Binding”, which made the quest to be very difficult to complete.

Items and Rewards

The Sons of Hodir have upped their fashion game and there is now a Sons of Hodir tabard available from Lillehoff in Dun Niffelem, Storm Peaks.
A new vendor has been added to Dalaran; the Animated Constellation. This vendor will exchange items from Ulduar 10-player Hard Mode for a new Sidereal Essence currency.
- Developer’s Note: The newest iteration of Titan Rune Dungeons is not yet available for testing, but when it becomes available, we’ll do a full breakdown of this vendor and how rewards in Defense Protocol Beta will function.
With the release of Trial of the Crusader, Ulduar item drops will be adjusted:
- Ulduar 10 Normal Mode items now drop from Defense Protocol Beta bosses in Titan Rune Dungeons
- Ulduar 25 Normal Mode items now drop from Ulduar 10.
- Ulduar 10 Hard Mode items still drop from Ulduar 10 Hard Modes.
- Ulduar 25 Hard Mode items still only drop from Ulduar 25 Hard Modes.

Known Issues
Raid and Dungeons:

Swapping been Normal and Heroic difficulties in Trial of the Crusader may cause enemy health bars to appear as if the enemy does not have full health.
- Note: This is a visual issue only and the enemies’ health is correct.
The visual for Anub’arak’s Leeching Swarm is missing on player targets.
When the difficulty is set to Heroic, the raid portal for Trial of the Grand Crusader is missing the 3d Skull Spell visual.
A Tribute to Immortality can currently be earned even after killing a boss in normal during that same lockout.
When standing in the middle of the Crusader’s Coliseum arena in Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader the minimap will turn green and the zone name changes to the Icy Depths.
You may not get a notification that you are saved to Trial of the Crusader or Trial of the Grand Crusader when you kill your first boss in the lockout.
- Note: This is a visual issue only and you will still be saved to that lockout.
You are unable to enter the 10 and 25 player versions of Onyxia’s lair if you are already locked to the 40 player, level 60 version.

User Interface

You may experience a game crash when checking and unchecking the “Low Level Quests” minimap tracking option while in Dalaran.
Your own player name and targeting circle may turn yellow when an enemy targets you if you have the Raid Self Highlight menu option enabled.
The Mac Version of Wrath of the Lich King Classic is currently experiencing multiple Lua errors.
Note: We are aware of most of these, but please still feel free to report any errors you encounter here in the PTR forum. Thank you!

Classes

There are visual issues with the animation for the Hunter ability Flare.

Wrath Classic Patch 3.4.2 Update Notes - May 11