Unleash the Adventure: WoW Classic's Phase 8 Patch Notes Are Here!

Summary

Phase 8 of World of Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery brings original content including a new raid, questlines, crafting recipes, and more.
New quest content in the Eastern Plaguelands and New Avalon offer exciting challenges for players.
The new Scarlet Enclave raid, opening on April 10, is designed for 20 and 40 players and promises a significant challenge.

In the realm of World of Warcraft Classic, the eighth phase of the Season of Discovery has been unveiled! This exclusive update features fresh content centered around the Scarlet Crusade in Tyr’s Hand. Adventurers can delve into new questlines in the Eastern Plaguelands and discover the town of New Avalon. The anticipated Scarlet Enclave raid is set to open on April 10, so players should prepare accordingly within World of Warcraft Classic during this Season of Discovery!

The ongoing experiment on “World of Warcraft Classic” is referred to as the “Season of Discovery.” In this context, Blizzard introduces variations to the traditional gameplay format. These modifications range from Rune Engravings that significantly impact classes, entirely novel items and questlines, and even unique dungeons such as the Karazhan Crypts from the “WoW Classic” Season of Discovery Phase 7.

Now, the much-anticipated update for World of Warcraft Classic‘s Season of Discovery has been released! This latest phase, Phase 8, takes the game to uncharted territories, offering content that’s never been seen in Classic WoW before. To embark on a fresh set of stories connected to the new Scarlet Enclave raid within Season of Discovery, players must first finish the “Scarlet Activities” from Phase 7 and then speak with Leonid Barthalomew the Revered at Light’s Hope Chapel. Meanwhile, adventurers can attempt to infiltrate New Avalon for new crafting recipes and other rewards, but beware – the Scarlet Bloodhounds are on high alert and can see right through any disguises!

Starting April 10 at 1 PM Pacific Daylight Time, the Scarlet Enclave will be accessible. This eight-boss encounter is designed for groups of 20 to 40 players and presents a tough challenge even for experienced raiders with top-tier gear. At present, it’s only offered in a challenging mode. The Scarlet Enclave doesn’t require any prerequisites for entry, but fans of World of Warcraft are encouraged to complete Leonid Barthalomew’s questlines to fully appreciate the raid’s narrative. Furthermore, Warriors, Hunters, and Paladins have a chance to acquire the Ruined Lightforge Blade from one of the bosses, which initiates a new Legendary weapon questline – presumably leading to the acquisition of the renowned Ashbringer from World of Warcraft lore.

This update also brought a unique twist to class equilibrium by adjusting some talents and abilities, while granting all pets from classes such as Hunters, Shamans, and Warlocks the advantage of their character’s Haste stat. Furthermore, Tier 3 set bonuses have been fine-tuned to promote enjoyable gear advancement within Scarlet Enclave, avoiding any one playstyle overwhelming each class.

Although we haven’t received an official announcement yet, indications point towards this possibly being the final significant update for the World of Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery. No matter if it turns out to be the grand finale or not, Phase 8 is anticipated to deliver one of the most thrilling updates so far.

World of Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery Phase 8 Patch Notes – April 8, 2025

New Quest Content in Eastern Plaguelands

Completing the “Scarlet Activities” quest in Phase 7 of Eastern Plaguelands allows you to talk to Leonid Bartholomew the Revered at Light’s Hope Chapel, where you can pick up the quest “Unrest at Tyr’s Hand”. This quest branches into several Scarlet Enclave-related questlines.

New Area – New Avalon

Infiltrate the town of New Avalon, hidden among the Scarlet Enclave ranks, before the significant events leading up to the raid. This quaint settlement specializes in crafting and offers basic urban amenities like a bank, a neutral marketplace for trading goods, and an alchemy lab.

To navigate New Avalon in relative safety, all armor crafting professions will have access to 8 new recipes for their respective armor types.
Most of the new recipes drop from crusaders local to the area, while a few can only be acquired from Scarlet Enclave raid itself.
These recipes and items they create can be bought, sold, and traded.
Once you have access to and complete “Gathering Intelligence” from Scarlet Inquisitor Caldoran at the Scarlet Base Camp west of Tyr’s Hand, you will gain access to the quest “New Avalon” and receive a Scarlet Insignia which can be used alongside 4 of these crafted items to blend in with the townsfolk of New Avalon.
While disguised, most of its residents are friendly to you and a few among them even have new quests for new profession recipes, such as bigger bags, cooking feasts, and more.
Beware when mingling with the citizens however, Scarlet Bloodhounds will not be fooled by your disguise and the crusaders are determined to ensure that intruders do not live to see tomorrow.
Bryon Steelblade, the Scarlet Quartermaster, will offer a weekly quest to either craft or donate equipment in exchange for a Scarlet Junkbox.
These boxes contain Tarnished Undermine Reals and a variety of useful crafting materials. Additionally, they contain Jostled Chalice Fragments which, upon collecting enough, can be reformed into a Crusader’s Chalice to be traded in with pieces of the crafted disguise for class tier set pieces.
Inside the town of New Avalon, there is an armistice buff in place that will prevent players from engaging in PvP combat.

New Raid Dungeon – The Scarlet Enclave

At precisely 1:00 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time, on Thursday, April 10th, I’ll have the chance to step into the Scarlet Enclave raid as a player. Can’t wait!

The entrance to the Scarlet Enclave can be found near the Scarlet Base Camp west of Tyr’s Hand.
There is no attunement or pre-requisite quest needed to enter the raid, but we do recommend progressing the questlines started by Leonid Barthalomew the Revered at Light’s Hope Chapel prior to entering.
The Scarlet Enclave has 8 bosses and is designed for 20 players. The raid instance accepts up to 40 players.
The Scarlet Enclave raid has a single difficulty mode and is tuned to be a significant challenge for organized groups in Naxxramas-level gear.
Developers’ notes: As the first all-new raid in the Original WoW setting, we felt it was appropriate for the Scarlet Enclave to present a challenge for those who have progressed significantly in the previous raid tiers. This is a slight departure from the previous approach to raid content, but we hope for this content to have a satisfying progression arc for most raid groups. We will watch progress closely, and will make adjustments as needed if there are any significant outliers in terms of difficulty and we have built in a mechanism to allow us to reduce the difficulty progressively, similar to the toggleable raid buffs present in Icecrown Citadel in Wrath of the Lich King. We have no plans to turn this on right now, but we may elect to enable it in the future.

New Legendary Weapon Questline

Adventurers making their way through The Scarlet Enclave could discover a “Decayed Radiant Forgemaster’s Sword” as a loot from a specific battle. This artifact serves as the starting point for the legendary weapon’s quest series.

The Legendary weapon questline is available to Warriors, Hunters, and Paladins.

Changes

The contents of the Wartorn Undermine Supply Crate has been adjusted. Several of the less desirable materials that could come from these crates have been removed from the loot table and a few more-desirable items have replaced them.
Pix Xizzix in booty bay now sells the quest items required to start the epic class weapon quests from Blackwing Lair for a cost of 150 Tarnished Undermine Reals.
The maximum cap of Tarnished Undermine Reals that players can hold at one time has been raised from 150 to 250.
Karazhan Crypts no longer requires the introduction questline to be completed to enter.
Karazhan Curios still require the Karazhan Crypts questline to be completed in order to be handed in for rewards.
The number of Tarnished Undermine Reals that drop within Karazhan Crypts and Demon Fall Canyon has been increased.
- The cost of Ahn’Qiraj and Naxxramas Tier items has been reduced by roughly 50%.
- The cost of the Naxxramas Tier Rings has been reduced to 3 Arcane Crystals (was 10).
- World Buffs can no longer be brought into Battlegrounds.
- World Buff consumables can no longer be used while inside Battlegrounds.
A new Graveyard has been added to New Avalon in Eastern Plaguelands. Any players that die in Tyr’s Hand or New Avalon should resurrect there and be able to utilize the drained of blood debuff from the Blood Moon/Blackrock Eruptions events to quickly recover their corpse.
Mysterious new secrets have been added to the game world. Happy hunting!
Blade of Inquisition – Strength proc change to 175 (was 250).
The actives on the crafted helms from Gnomeregan cannot be used by characters above level 59.

Classes

In Phase 8, we plan to tweak the damage figures emanating from Naxxramas, fine-tune and harmonize tank resilience levels, and foster a more conducive environment for healers to operate together. Many alterations will be observed in bonuses from previous tiers’ gear sets. Usually, we avoid modifying these bonuses, but since they can now be accessed via shoulder enchants, and certain Tier 3 bonuses are playing crucial roles within Naxxramas for specific classes, we deemed it necessary to make these adjustments. This way, future equipment upgrades continue to hold significance.

Druid

Developers’ notes: Rake’s playstyle has been good in Naxxramas, but we want to open up more opportunities for Feral Druids to press meaningful finishers. This phase there is a push away from Rake, and more towards Ferocious Bite as a key way to deal damage. With the Scarlet Enclave tier’s emphasis on Tiger’s Fury, we’re also making a change to allow players who shift to retain the buff.
The King of the Jungle Rune now allows players to retain their Tiger’s Fury buff when shifting into Caster Form.
Soul of the Frenetic changed to 5% increased Shred damage (was 15%).
Soul of the Claw changed to 10% damage to Rake (was 40%).
Soul of the Claw changed to extend Rake’s duration by 3 seconds (was 6).

Hunter

Developers’ note: The changes to Tier 3 are to improve synergy with the Scarlet Enclave tier. The new ranged Tier 3 2piece bonus (formerly the 4piece) felt like it created a more fluid rotation without using Lock and Load, and we wanted to continue to offer access to these rotations while using Scarlet Enclave gear.
Ranged Tier 3 4piece bonus changed to also reduce the cooldown of Multi-Shot by 3 seconds.
Ranged Tier 3 2piece and 4piece bonuses have been swapped (the 2piece is now the cooldown reduction bonus).
Soul of the Bounty Hunter Kill Shot increase changed to 10% (was 30%).
Lone Wolf changed to 25% increased damage (was 30%).
Melee Specialist rune’s chance to reset Raptor Strike changed to 40% (was 30%).
Raptor Strike Off-hand changed to be non-normalized like the Main Hand (was normalized).
Pets now benefit from your Haste stat (excluding Quiver attack speed).
Biznicks 247×128 Accurascope now also grants your pet 3% hit.

Mage

Developers’ note: The DPS Mage Tier 3 bonuses are extremely strong, but also not the most fun playstyle when it comes to pre-pull actions, or mid-fight channeling. Originally, we had planned for the Scarlet Enclave tier to emphasize Evocation and relieve some of the weaknesses like cooldown, channel time, and pushback. But we decided it’s a better route to create more interesting rotations and choices around Balefire Bolt and Frozen Orb, instead of dumping more power into an ability that you used once before a fight, and then hoped no one canceled the pull timer.
DPS Tier 3 2piece Evocation bonus changed from to 1% per stack while outside of Naxxramas (was 5% and still is inside of Naxxramas).
The DPS Tier 3 2piece bonus mentioned above has swapped with the DPS Tier 3 4piece bonus.
Soul of the Torcher changed to 4% per effect on the target (was 3%).
Balefire Bolt changed to 30% damage increase per stack (was 20%).
Deep Freeze now benefits from your stacks of Glaciate but does not consume them.
Soul of the Cryomancer changed to 75% increased damage (was 65%).
Developers’ note: Being able to heal the entire raid for decent chunks every cast has proven to be fun, but only for the healing Mage. Much like the shift in Naxxramas away from Priest shielding, we believe that healing Mages are negating too many of the interesting parts of other healer’s moment to moment decision making on who or where to heal. We wanted to lower the blanket healing that Mages provide, buff their single-target healing , and make the Frost version of the spec an actual choice between high damage vs. high healing, and not high damage and high healing.
Soul of the Cryomancer no longer increases the healing done by Spellfrost Bolt to your Temporal Beacons.
Mass Regeneration cooldown changed to 12 seconds (was 6).
Arcane Blast stacks no longer interact with your healing spells (this means heals do not benefit from or consume Arcane Blast stacks).
Regeneration changed to heal 30% more.
Mass Regeneration changed to heal 30% more.
Chronostatic Preservation changed to heal 10% more.
Regeneration and Mass Regeneration now benefit from the caster’s Spell Haste.
Temporal Beacons changed to heal for 70% of the Arcane damage dealt (was 80%).
Temporal Beacons changed to heal yourself for 35% of the Arcane damage dealt (was 40%).

Paladin

Developers’ notes: Retribution Paladins have a lot of playstyles that we want to keep intact and as viable options. So the emphasis here for us was to bring down power, while keeping the styles intact. The only stylistic change is to the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj 3piece bonus, which has always been intended as a means to give an off-beat One-Handed Retribution Paladin a chance to play in the sand a bit – so we’re restricting it back to One-Handed weapons like the set itself intended.
Soul of the Sealbearer reduces Seal damage by 35% (was 15%).
Soul of the Justicar increases Judgement damage by 5% (was 20%).
Soul of the Judicator now reduces Judgement damage by 45% (new effect).
Soul of the Retributor increases the damage of Crusader Strike by 150% (was 50%).
Retribution Tier 3 2piece bonus changed to be Additive (was multiplicative).
Soul of the Exile increases Exorcism damage by 75% (was 50%).
Righteous Vengeance DoT changed to 30% of the attack’s damage (was 50%).
Improved Sanctuary changed to increase its damage dealt by 20% of your Block value (was 30%).
Soul of the Templar changed to require a one-handed weapon (was any weapon).

Priest

Developers’ notes: As Shadow Priests have gained damage in Season of Discovery, their healing has proven to scale up even quicker. We felt it was a better choice to lower the amount of space that Shadow Priests are taking up healing their group, than to lower their damage aside from adjustments to Soul of the Mind Breaker, which also has a new portion to tackle some frustrations around spell queueing.
Soul of the Mind Breaker changed to 25% increase in Mind Flay damage (was 50%).
Soul of the Mind Breaker’s empowered Mind Flay will now tick slightly faster than before to try and avoid players clipping it with spell queuing.
Vampiric Embrace healing changed to 2% (was 5%).
Improved Vampiric Embrace healing changed to 1% per talent point (was 5% per talent point).

Rogue

Developers’ note: Rogue’s needed more damage. That’s it, that’s the note. Tank Rogues needed a way to stack up Rolling with the punches while not tanking, since it is a decent part of their durability if a tank swap is ever needed.
Carnage damage changed to 15% (was 8%).
Slaughter from the Shadows changed to 70% damage to Backstab and Ambush (was 60%).
Mutilate changed to 95% weapon damage (was 80%).
Saber Slash damage per stack changed to 50% damage (was 33%).
Rolling with the Punches changed to 5% health per stack (was 6%).
Main Gauche parry buff duration changed to 5 seconds (was 10).
Main Gauche Sinister Strike buff duration changed to 20 seconds (was 30).
Main Gauche’s Sinister Strike buff now causes casts of Sinister Strike to grant stacks of Rolling with the Punches.

Shaman

Developers’ notes: Pets benefitting from haste means that the burst of Enhancement Shamans went up slightly, especially 2handed. So we wanted to bring thay down slightly. Tank Shaman’s effective health pool between their armor and raw hp, is a bit too high, so we’re bring that down slightly. They should still have the best in class health pool at the end of the day if they gear for it.
Lava Lash damage increase from Flametongue Weapon changed to 150% (was 100%).
Two-handed Mastery changed to 45% attack speed (was 50%).
Two-handed Mastery changed to 10% attack power (was 15%).
Health from Way of Earth changed to 25% (was 30%).
Soul of the True Alpha health increase changed to 5% (was 10%) .
Soul of the True Alpha damage increase changed to 5% (was 10%) .
Soul of the True Alpha threat increase changed to 25% (was 20%) .
Elemental Shaman Tier 3 2piece bonus changed to 40% Flame Shock periodic damage (was 20%).
Pets now benefit from your Spell Haste or Melee Haste, whichever is better, and converts into Melee Haste.

Warlock

Developers’ notes: In the opposite vein as Shaman Tanks, Warlock tanks have had too high avoidance, too low durability, and this was felt by most guilds who used a Warlock main tank for something like Maexxna during Naxxramas progression. We shifted Tank Rogues away from avoidance cap in exchange for allowing them to actually take hits, and for Warlocks we plan to do the same thing by increasing their health pool in Metamorphosis, which was starting to look like it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the health pools of other tanks.
DPS Tier 3 4piece damage changed to 33% of the DoT’s damage (was 75%).
Pets now benefit from your Spell Haste and convert it into both Spell and Melee Haste.
New effect: Metamorphosis grants 15% increased health.
Dance of the Wicked now converts 70% of your critical strike chance into Dodge (was 100%).
Damage dealt reduction in Metamorphosis changed to 10% reduction (was 15%).
Threat increase in Metamorphosis changed to 50% (was 77%).
Shadow Cleave now grants 4 spell power per defense (up from 2).
Chaos Bolt changed to deal Chaos damage, which is Fire, Frost, Arcane, Shadow, and Nature damage (was just Fire) .
Demonic Pact now only counts half of the spell power from Defender’s Resolve (so it is unchanged and does not benefit from the above buff).

Warrior

Developers’ notes: Warriors have been relying on using the active on the Tempered Interference-Negating Helmet from Gnomeregan to compete. We feel that is clunky and unintuitive to the average player, so we have removed the ability to use the gnomeregan helmets past level 59 and offset that change for Warriors with 10% attack speed for 2handed weapons, and 5% attack speed for 1handed weapons.
Soul of the Titan damage increase to Heroic Strike, Slam, and Overpower changed to 10% (Was 25%).
Soul of the Battle Forecaster changed to 5% crit, damage, and damage reduction when changing stances (was 10%).
Soul of the Sanguinist damage changed to 15% (was 20%).
Frenzied Assault changed to 40% attack speed (was 30%).
Single-Minded Fury changed to 4% attack speed per stack (was 3%).
Soul of the Aftershock reduces the cooldown of Shockwave by 25% (was 50%).

Items

Blade of Inquisition – Strength proc change to 175 (was 250).
The actives on the crafted helms from Gnomeregan cannot be used by characters above level 59.

2025-04-09 01:20

Unleash the Adventure: WoW Classic’s Phase 8 Patch Notes Are Here!