Blizzard’s Midnight pre-patch lands on January 20, 2026 and includes a stat squish that players in the beta say breaks legacy raid scaling. Several reports show fights that took seconds on live builds now stretching into minutes on the Midnight beta.
Reddit user Useful-Business-6922 posted that they entered a Dragonflight raid on the beta and it took 10 minutes to defeat a boss on Normal difficulty. On live that same encounter takes roughly 20 to 30 seconds. That gap suggests Mythic difficulty will be dramatically overtuned once the pre-patch goes live. Another player reported attempting the first boss in Sepulcher of the First Ones. On live that kill clocks in at about 30 seconds. On the beta it took them 2 minutes.
There is a public discussion thread about soloing past expansion raids on the beta. The thread is available on Reddit and is embedded below:
Has anyone tried soloing past Expansion Raids in Beta to see how the level squish feels?
byu/Oliveea inwow
Blizzard has historically introduced a stat squish at new expansion pre-patches, and legacy raid scaling can break as a result. Fixes for those scaling problems often arrive in the first follow-up patch, the 12.0.1 build, rather than in the initial pre-patch. Console PC Gaming previously reported on the Midnight pre-patch and the 12.0.1 beta’s development notes, which include broad class tuning and other adjustments that may affect solo performance. The development notes were published December 16, 2025 and outline the wider changes arriving with Midnight.
For players who plan to solo older raids for gear, mounts, or other rewards, the beta reports suggest completing those farms before January 20 if possible. Soloing will likely be much slower in the immediate pre-patch window until Blizzard issues follow-up fixes.
Follow updates on the Midnight pre-patch and how it affects legacy content on X, Bluesky, YouTube, and Instagram.
