WoW: The War Within patch brings major Delve fixes and class changes

World of Warcraft: The War Within has made a steady start to life out in the wild, with many praising the expansion’s overall direction. That said, there are some problems, and Blizzard has rolled out more changes to address them.

Delves serve as one of the new centerpiece activities in The War Within, as players venture further underground to take on new enemies and earn high-level rewards. Unfortunately, many have run into major issues while running through the activity.

Much of the consternation surrounding the game mode comes thanks to major discrepancies in how difficulty scales. As an example, solo Tank players had a much more difficult time progressing over DPS players, purely because of how hard the mobs hit.

Blizzard recently declared the issue a top priority, with fixes rolled out in this patch aimed at addressing the most egregious concerns.

WoW: The War Within fixes for September 14

Blizzard Entertainment/Dexerto

The complete notes for the September 14 fixes are as follows:

Delves

• Addressed scaling issues causing enemies in Delves to deal more damage than intended, especially for groups and tanks.
  • Developers’ notes: Over the last day, we’ve sought to address the unintended circumstance where certain group compositions made the health of enemies lower than they would be if you went into a Delve by yourself. We also tried moving some of the harder affixes from first appearing in Tier 9 and above into Tier 8. The results were not what we hoped for. We’ve now brought enemy damage back down closer to our targets, the most-difficult affixes have been sent back to Tier 9, and scaling adjustments should make group and solo play less lethal.
• Nightfall Sanctum
  • Resolved an issue where players could get stuck in combat after dying to Speaker Davenruth.
• The Underkeep
  • Reduced Crazed Abominations’ health.
• The Waterworks
  • Waxface’s Throw Wax damage done reduced by ~15%.
  • Waxface should not immediately begin casting a new spell upon completion of Noxious Gas.

Achievements

• Players will now earn the achievements Harbinger of the Weathered, Harbinger of the Carved, and Harbinger of the Runed immediately upon outgrowing the use of those crests.

Classes

• Demon Hunter
  • Vengeance
    • Shattered Souls missiles will no longer display for allies.
• Druid
  • Feral
    • Fixed a bug preventing Ferocious Bite from damaging crowd-controlled targets.
• Evoker
  • Devastation
    • Fixed an issue where Mass Disintegrate was not benefiting properly from Iridescence or Titanic Wrath.
  • Preservation
    • Cycle of Life no longer accumulates healing done to pets and guardians.
• Monk
  • Mistweaver
    • Fixed an issue that caused Jade Bond’s increase to Yu’lon’s Soothing Breath to not function in some scenarios.
• Paladin

• Protection
  • Fixed an interaction causing Judgment to trigger Righteous Protector’s cooldown reduction when Bastion of Light was active.
  • Fixed an interaction causing Bastion of Light’s stacks to not be consumed when Shining Light was active.
• Retribution
  • An issue causing Empyrean Hammer to not function on training dummies has been resolved.
  • Instrument of Retribution will no longer trigger Dawnlight.
  • An issue causing Instrument of Retribution to trigger Avenging Wrath when talented into Crusade (and vice versa) has been resolved.

• Shaman
  • Fixed an issue causing Farseer Ancestor spells to have a damage reduction adjustment applied twice to their spells.
  • Corrected an issue where Stormbringer Tempest would consume multiple stacks when striking multiple enemy targets.
  • Fixed an issue causing Mastery: Elemental Overload to not increase damage from all pets.
  • Elemental
    • Fixed an issue causing Mastery: Elemental Overload to not increase damage from all pets.
• Warlock
  • Increased the threat generation of voidwalkers’ and felguards’ Threatening Presence.

Dungeons and Raids

• Nerub-ar Palace
  • Silken Court
    • When Binding Webs is broken by immunity, it will now correctly remove it from ally and they will no longer falsely appear connected.
    • Triggering intermissions while a boss is stunned will no longer cause Anub’arash or Takazj to stay during the other’s intermission.

Events

• Awakening the Machine
  • Addressed an issue causing the Awakened Phalanx to become stuck in an unattackable state.

Items and Rewards

• Class Set items purchased with Web-Wrapped Curio or Mark of the Spelunker Supreme should now be refundable.
• Fixed a bug where reaching Renown Rank 11 with the Council of Dornogal was not presenting a quest with Carved Harbinger Crests as a reward.
• Warbound-until-Equipped gear obtained from seasonal legacy dungeons should now have correct item levels. This fix is retroactive.

Quests

• Pale Weavelashers should now respawn accordingly in the Silken Ward, improving the local quests and the World Quest “Enforcer Extermination”.
• “Zekvir, Hand of the Harbinger” no longer requires that you complete the Delve seasonal journey.
• In Azj-Kahet, “Special Assignment: A Pound of Cure” has been adjusted to be faster to complete.

Hopefully, this set of changes does enough to rebalance Delves and allows them to function as originally intended. With the first season now live, more players are heading into the activity to gear up and it will quickly become apparent if things are not right.