World of Warcraft's Plunderstorm Returns with Enhanced Features and Rewards
Plunderstorm, World of Warcraft's pirate-themed battle royale, has returned, bringing with it a host of new features and quality-of-life improvements. While the end date remains unannounced, players can anticipate at least a month of swashbuckling action in the Arathi Highlands.
This iteration boasts significant enhancements. The battlefield features revamped points of interest and respawning non-elite enemies, ensuring a constant supply of loot. Fast travel horses provide rapid traversal across the map, aiding in the search for chests, elites, and opponents. A new map overlay displays zone threat levels based on combat frequency, allowing for strategic decision-making, including selectable deployment zones. A practice lobby offers a safe space to experiment with abilities, adjust keybindings, and socialize.
New Plunderstorm Features:
- Revamped points of interest
- Respawning non-elite enemies
- Fast travel horses
- Zone threat indicators on the map
- Selectable deployment zones
- Practice Lobby
- Plunderstore with new and returning rewards
- Access while playing World of Warcraft: The War Within characters
New Abilities:
Offensive:
- Aura of Zealotry: Passively increases allied movement speed. Casting consecrates the ground, periodically damaging enemies and granting enhanced movement speed and melee attack buffs.
- Celestial Barrage: Summons a barrage of moonbeams, damaging enemies. Powering up increases range.
Utility:
- Call Galefeather: Summons Galefeather to knock back enemies with wind.
- Void Tear: Creates a Void mark. Recasting instantly teleports the player to the mark, damaging and slowing enemies. Instant recast is possible while casting other spells.
Ability Balance Changes:
Several existing spells have received cooldown adjustments:
- Earthbreaker: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds.
- Slicing Winds: Cooldown increased by 2 seconds.
- Star Bomb: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds.
- Storm Archon: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds.
- Toxic Smackerel: Cooldown increased by 1.5 seconds.
The Plunderstore, accessible from the Practice Lobby, login screen, and the retail WoW PvP interface, offers a new way to acquire rewards. However, the Trios mode from the previous iteration is absent, a change whose reasoning remains unexplained.
