WoW Hotfixes, August 31: What Actually Reaches Rated PvP

Blizzard filed none of this under Player versus Player

There is no Player versus Player heading in the August 31 hotfixes, and that heading has never been the boundary of what reaches rated play. Two things in this batch land squarely in arena and rated battlegrounds: an Omnium Folio fix that stops one of your own runes breaking crowd control, and six class fixes that apply wherever those specialisations are played. The Venomous Abyss work, which is the bulk of the list by volume, does not. The full text is on Blizzard's rolling hotfix article.

Omnium Folio: your own rune was breaking your crowd control

The single line that matters most to a rated player reads: the Rune of Lingering could cause your Core Rune to break crowd-controlled enemies. That is fixed.

The rune's own live tooltip explains why it happened. Rune of Lingering makes your Core Rune deal additional Cosmic damage to enemies, or additional healing to allies, over 8 seconds. A periodic damage effect sitting on an enemy is exactly what breaks the crowd control that breaks on damage, and because the damage lingered for 8 seconds it could land well after you thought you were clear to set up a kill. Omnium Folio runes are active in instanced PvP, so this was a live problem in arena, Solo Shuffle and Blitz, not a PvE-only curiosity.

If you have been losing setups to crowd control breaking for no visible reason while running this rune, that is the bug, and it is now gone.

One neighbouring rune is worth knowing about while you are here. Rune of Echoes accumulates 50% of the damage your Core Rune and your Rune of Lingering deal into a curse on the target, then discharges all of it when the curse expires 10 seconds later. Blizzard's hotfix names only Rune of Lingering, so treat Echoes as unchanged rather than assuming it got the same correction.

The class fixes

Every class entry is a correctness fix rather than a buff or a nerf, and every one of them is written without encounter scope, so the corrected behaviour is live in rated PvP as well as in PvE. The middle column links the affected mechanic so you can read its current tooltip.

Specialisation	Key ability	What was fixed
Unholy Death Knight	Virulent Plague	Dread and Virulent Plague Erupt effects were not working as intended with the target and caster damage modifiers Foul Infections, Thrill of Blood, Incite Terror, Morbidity, Soul Reaper, Brittle, and the War debuff of Rune of the Apocalypse.
Restoration Druid	Grove Guardians	Grove Guardians were not prioritising the target of your Swiftmend or Wild Growth. Separately, Everbloom could heal 6 targets instead of the intended 5.
Fire Mage	Hot Streak!	The 2-piece set bonus Flamestrike did not always grant Hot Streak when it was a guaranteed critical strike due to Pyroclasm.
Mistweaver Monk	Soothing Mist	Soothing Mist could rarely cause the incorrect aura to be cancelled.
Holy Priest	Guardian Spirit	Guardian Angel would not reduce the cooldown of Guardian Spirit when placed on an ally.
Affliction Warlock	Unstable Affliction	With Hellcaller, Blackened Soul would not activate from Unstable Affliction applied via Fatal Echoes.

What the class fixes change in rated play

Three of the six are healers, which is why this batch is felt most in Solo Shuffle.

• Holy Priest is the clearest one. Guardian Angel refunding cooldown on Guardian Spirit is the difference between having a major external ready for the next kill attempt and not having it. A cooldown that was silently not being refunded is a defensive you have been short of all season.
• Restoration Druid gets a genuine improvement and a genuine trim. Grove Guardians now healing the target of your Swiftmend or Wild Growth matters most when you are triaging one focused player, which is the normal state of an arena game. The Everbloom correction from 6 targets to 5 cannot bind in a 3v3 or Solo Shuffle lobby, where there are never 6 allies to heal; it only bites in Blitz and rated battlegrounds.
• Mistweaver Monk gets a rare edge case cleaned up on its core channel. Low frequency, but Soothing Mist is not a spell you want behaving unpredictably while you are being trained.
• Unholy Death Knight has its plague damage applying with the intended modifiers again. This is a damage-output fix, so it shows up as damage that was quietly missing rather than as a new button.
• Affliction Warlock regains a Hellcaller interaction on Unstable Affliction, which is a spell nobody playing Affliction in rated PvP can avoid casting.
• Fire Mage is the one with the least rated relevance of the six, because the fix runs through Flamestrike. That is a battleground pattern far more than an arena one.

The tier list below is built from live ladder data. Use it to check where the three fixed healers actually sit in your region right now: a correctness fix does not move a specialisation up a tier, and this is the place to confirm that rather than assume it.

The rest of the list, which is PvE

The Venomous Abyss took the largest share of the work and none of it reaches instanced PvP. On the Coiled Altar, Coalesced Venom could rarely spawn inside a Virulent Mutation rim on Mythic, Soul Sever was highlighting the wrong Manifestations of Dread, and the Defilement healing absorb is down 20% on Mythic. On Ula'tek, damage from carrying eggs is now periodic rather than direct, Blight Vein and Toxic Burn could each occasionally deal extra damage, Dancing Rune Weapon could fail to cast when targeting the Venomous Heart, Grasping Fangs has more range, and Ula'tek could incorrectly re-emerge during the intermission.

Two smaller entries close the day. On Gnarldor Isle, Minchi's Osseous Adventure now asks for 4 bone piles instead of 6. In the interface, Housewarming housing quest groups moved to the Questing section of the Premade Group Finder, from Custom.

Next steps

If you run Omnium Folio in rated PvP, the practical action is simply to stop planning around the old behaviour. Beyond that, the useful check is where the fixed specialisations stand on your own ladder.

• EU meta tier list and US meta tier list
• EU Solo Shuffle leaderboard and US Solo Shuffle leaderboard
• Spec pages for the healers in this batch: Holy Priest, Restoration Druid, Mistweaver Monk