Hotfixes September 10: Evoker Hover and Warp Fixes in PvP

What changed

Blizzard's September 10 hotfixes carry a Player versus Player section for the second batch running, and both entries in it are Evoker mobility bugs. Unburdened Flight was pushing Deep Breath forward during Hover, and Chronowarden's Warp was still handing out snare immunity to anyone talented into Unburdened Flight. Neither is a tuning change: no damage, healing or cooldown value moved for any specialisation in this batch.

Two of the unmarked class fixes also turn on crowd control, which is where they reach rated play. Survival Hunter was losing the initial damage of Wildfire Bomb when the Hunter was controlled as the bomb landed, and Mage Splinters were striking targets that were already controlled instead of free ones. Sixteen entries in all, across Classes, Delves, Dungeons and Raids, Player versus Player, Prey and The Burning Crusade Classic.

Classes

These entries carry no PvP marker, so they apply wherever the specialisation is played, rated arenas and battlegrounds included.

Death Knight

Unholy

• Resolved an issue causing Magus of the Dead to occasionally spawn at extreme vertical differences.

Hunter

Survival

• Corrected an issue where the initial damage of Wildfire Bomb would not happen if the Hunter was affected by crowd control effects while the bomb hit the target.
• Corrected an issue where Strike As One would not deal damage with a Raptor Swipe that benefit from Tip of the Spear if Aspect of the Eagle is active.

Mage

Hero Talents

Spellslinger

• Fixed an issue causing Splinters from Augury Abounds to sometimes strike crowd-controlled targets when other non-crowd controlled targets are available.

Paladin

Holy

• Fixed an issue that caused Ringing of the Heavens to not function if cast as Lightsmith while targeting an enemy.

Protection

• Fixed an issue where Glory of the Vanguard was not dealing full damage to its primary target.

Rogue

• Both versions of Thistle Tea can now be tracked in the Cooldown Manager.

Shaman

Restoration

• Fixed an issue where Soothing Rain did not properly reduce the cast time of Healing Rain by 0.5 seconds.

Delves

• Fixed an issue where Domanaar Enforcer's could Devour an already dead corpse.
• Explorer's League Supplies and the Abandoned Restoration Stone will now appear in the Twilight Crypts delve variant "Loosed Loa."

Dungeons and Raids

Den of Nalorakk

• Addressed an issue where Nalorakk's Echoing Maul can sometimes trigger unintentionally.

The Venomous Abyss

The Lost Explorers

• Mor'zahi's damage escalation during Final Ascension will now reset if his cast is interrupted.

Player versus Player

A change filed under this heading applies to PvP and nowhere else. Both of today's entries do.

Evoker

• Fixed an issue where Unburdened Flight was causing Deep Breath to move the player forward during Hover.

Hero Talents

Chronowarden

• Fixed an issue where Warp was still causing the player to become immune to snares while talented into Unburdened Flight.

Prey

• The buff from Afflicted and Tormented Souls is no longer removed on death, by entering a battleground or arena, or by switching specializations, and cannot be accidentally removed by the player.

The Burning Crusade Classic

• Arena Season 2 belts, bracers, boots, rings, and necklaces can now be purchased at a discounted honor cost from vendors in the Hall of Legends (Orgrimmar) and Champion's Hall (Stormwind).

Evoker mobility in arenas and battlegrounds

Patch 12.1 redesigned Unburdened Flight, and both of today's PvP entries are consequences of that redesign that survived into the live season. The second one is the heavier of the two.

Snare immunity on Warp was not supposed to persist while Unburdened Flight was talented, and until today it did. That matters more this season than it would have last season, because patch 12.1 also cut the strength of PvP snares broadly, one step down across the board. A specialisation that could ignore snares outright was ignoring a set of tools that had already been weakened for everyone else, and the teams that relied on peeling an Evoker off a target had the least left to peel with. Removing the immunity puts the counterplay back where the patch intended it.

The Deep Breath fix is narrower and purely positional. Hover is the ability that lets an Evoker keep casting while moving, so an unintended forward push during it was a bug that moved you somewhere you had not asked to go, in the middle of a cast. Nothing about Deep Breath's damage or cooldown changed.

Neither entry touches a number, so nothing here should move a specialisation's rating on its own. Where it will show, if it shows anywhere, is in how Evokers are represented once snare-based pressure starts landing again. Watch Evoker representation on the 3v3 tier list over the next couple of weeks.

Two entries elsewhere in the batch reach rated play without a PvP marker, and both are crowd control bugs. Survival Hunter's Wildfire Bomb was dropping its initial damage whenever the Hunter was controlled at the moment the bomb hit, which is a common state in arena rather than a rare one. Spellslinger Splinters were spending themselves on targets that were already crowd-controlled while free targets stood next to them, which quietly broke the damage that is meant to force a healer to react. Both were fixed, and both are worth a look before your next rated game.

One more change affects what you carry into a queue. The Prey buff from Afflicted and Tormented Souls now survives death, a specialisation swap, and the loading screen into a battleground or arena, where before it did not.

Next steps

If you play an Evoker, requeue and re-test your kiting patterns before you trust a pathing habit built on the old snare behaviour. If you play against one, snares are worth pressing again.

Check where your specialisation sits now on the meta pages for EU 3v3 and US 3v3. The Survival Hunter and Spellslinger fixes land on top of the diminishing returns rules in the PvP diminishing returns guide, which is the thing that decides how long any of those snares and stuns actually hold. Yesterday's batch is in the September 9 hotfix roundup, and if capture the flag is where you meet Evoker mobility most often, the Warsong Gulch guide and the Battleground Blitz guide cover the maps it matters on.