World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has a major new patch. It’s mostly dedicated to tuning and keeping things in check until the next raid arrives later this year, but that doesn’t mean the changes aren’t important. Patch 9.0.5 was released on Tuesday in North America, bringing players better rewards for Mythic Plus dungeons, dozens of tuning changes, and lots of other small changes.
As with any World of Warcraft balance patch, your opinion on what the biggest changes are is likely decided by which class you play. Very few classes got direct nerfs, with the notable exception of Vengeance Demon Hunters. Meanwhile, Rogues got a few massive buffs in this patch that might take them from one of the worst classes in this expansion to one of the best — or at least one of the most popular.
Blizzard also redesigned the Mythic Plus loot system for this patch. Players now get two pieces of loot for dungeons they finish, even if they don’t complete them within the Mythic Plus timer. Players also earn a new currency called Valor which can be used to upgrade Mythic Plus gear to a new higher item level.
While the patch has only just made its way to live servers, it was also in testing on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Public Test Realm for several weeks before the notes were finalized and the patch was released. Blizzard first released the notes for this patch last week, but the development team has been consistently tweaking them ever since. The final update to the notes arrived on Monday, the day before the patch went live in North America. As with most World of Warcraft patches, Blizzard will likely make a few tweaks to this update over the next few days and weeks.
For a look at the dozens of other changes in patch 9.0.5 you can check out the full patch notes.