World of Warcraft Shows Off New Plunderstorm Abilities and Features

Plunderstorm Returns to World of Warcraft with Enhanced Features and Rewards

World of Warcraft's pirate-themed battle royale, Plunderstorm, has made a triumphant return, 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. The event, initially slated for January 14th, launched slightly later than expected, but is now live.

This iteration of Plunderstorm boasts significant enhancements. The Arathi Highlands 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, elite enemies, and opponents. A new map overlay displays zone threat levels based on combat frequency, and players can now select their starting deployment zone.

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
• Game mode accessible while on World of Warcraft: The War Within characters

New Abilities:

The Plunderstore offers a selection of new and returning rewards. New abilities include:

• Offensive:
  • Aura of Zealotry: Passively boosts ally movement speed. Casting consecrates the ground, periodically damaging enemies and granting enhanced movement speed and melee attack power within the consecrated area.
  • Celestial Barrage: Summons a barrage of moonbeams, damaging enemies. Powering up this spell significantly increases its range.
• Utility:
  • Call Galefeather: Summons Galefeather to knock back enemies with strong winds.
  • Void Tear: Creates a Void mark. Recasting instantly teleports the player to the mark, damaging and slowing nearby enemies. The recast is instantaneous, even while casting other spells.

Existing spell cooldowns have also been adjusted for balance:

• Earthbreaker: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds at all ranks.
• Slicing Winds: Cooldown increased by 2 seconds at all ranks.
• Star Bomb: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds at all ranks.
• Storm Archon: Cooldown reduced by 2 seconds at all ranks.
• Toxic Smackerel: Cooldown increased by 1.5 seconds at all ranks.

A new Practice Lobby allows players to experiment with abilities, adjust keybindings and transmogs, and interact with others. Players can access the Plunderstore, queue for matches, and even access the game mode from the retail WoW PvP interface.

The absence of the three-person Trios mode is notable. Blizzard has yet to explain this omission, leaving fans hoping for its return before Plunderstorm sets sail again.