Documented Enhancement Hotfix Changes

[Imnick]

Hey all. As with each major patch that significantly changes class spells and abilities, we review tuning based on live data once it’s live, to look for any tuning issues that may have arisen. Based on that, we’re planning to make the following changes during the next weekly restarts in each region. We’ll continue to pay close attention to each spec’s performance as players progress through the Nighthold, and are ready to make further adjustments as necessary.

Shaman

Enhancement

• Crash Lightning, Flametongue, Lava Lash, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Shield, Rockbiter, Stormstrike, Windfury, and Windsong damage increased by 4%.
• Hailstorm damage increased by 29%.
• Boulderfist damage increased by 15%.
• Fury of Air damage reduced by 12%.
• Doom Vortex damage increased by 33%.

Back in business, boys?


Sims by Rusah:

No legendaries:

For 0p, nothing significant changes. An overused talent gets brought back, a few under-used talents are brought up. Balance for 0p builds is a lot closer, and good overall for our spec. Hailstorm comes up quite a bit, tack an extra 1.5% on to each HS build with the legendary ring and they'll be closer.

When we get 4p tier, things change a lot from before the hotfix. Boulderfist flies to the top, as the Boulderfist/Tempest builds are going to dominate, with AS > LS > HS (lol hailstorm still bad for this build). Legendary ring again props up the BF/HS/T build a good amount to be about equal with the other top 2 builds. The next best HS build is pretty far down, unfortunately maintaining its uptime has an incredible amount of GCD competition with Windsong/Hot Hand builds which utilize Rockbiter. Stormbringer proc rates are very high with 4p and the extra haste is unfortunately still far more valuable for fishing for maximum stormbringers. Time spent not generating resource is time not spent casting more Lava Lashes to utilize our 4p. Boulderfist has freedom to fit Hailstorm in between recharges, propping it far above other talent combinations that take it.

Overall? Hailstorm is still pretty meh. What makes hailstorm weak with our 4p is not its lack of damage, but that it directly competes with the design of our 4p bonus and undermines your ability to generate and spend resource on Lava Lash. Boulderfist gets around this limitation by gating your resources.

You are still more than welcome to play a variety of builds. If you are pushing bleeding edge content, consider taking one of the top 6 builds for 0/4p. If you just want to have fun, and play what you want you are more then welcome - Many options are within 97%+ of the "current" best simming combination. The build you perform the best with may not be the top build on sims. Whatever you'll do the best numbers with is what you should play.

It's unclear where this puts us in DPS rankings yet, because other classes also moved around.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Looks like buff is back on the menu, boys!

[Darleth]

WOW... Hailstorm damage increased by 29%.

Blizzard is officially high on drugs. Their current team really has no clue about balancing properly.

[Imnick]

WOW... Hailstorm damage increased by 29%.

Blizzard is officially high on drugs. Their current team really has no clue about balancing properly.

That means it's now 27% (still less than last patch), not that it is now going to do 50% weapon damage.

[Xanda]

I'm pretty sure that HS will now be the mandatory choice for whom has wrist or ring (or both in my case)

[Imnick]

I'm pretty sure that HS will now be the mandatory choice for whom has wrist or ring (or both in my case)

Wrist and Ring made Hailstorm equal to other talents before this buff (but still a poor choice, because you could just wear any other legendary to do more than equal damage), so this is very likely.
I will add in sim reports from Discord as they are finished :v

[Ianus]

so basically they killed FoA again lol

[MakeMeLaugh]

WOW... Hailstorm damage increased by 29%.

Blizzard is officially high on drugs. Their current team really has no clue about balancing properly.

That's exactly what I said in another thread. They have NO idea how to balance or what is going on with a class/spec.

Another example:

Beast Mastery
Cobra Shot damage increased by 46%.

How bad do you have to be at balancing that after a whole PTR you end up buffing something for almost 50% 4 days after release? Lol.

[Ianus]

is hailstorm now better than AS again?

[Darleth]

That means it's now 27% (still less than last patch), not that it is now going to do 50% weapon damage.

Its still just sad. They're absolutely clueless about balancing talents properly, or even whats needed for most classes/specs.
Just look at those MM hunter buffs... 8% increase on all abilities, while not even caring about their current playstyle, which is just horrible.

In our case we jsut gain flat damage buffs and an overall decrease on FoA. If they want FoA to be only for AoE, why aren't they just adding a mechanic, that as soon as it hits more than X targets it deals X more damage? We have our cleave activation on a similar system and I think it would work fine for FoA to turn it into a pure AoE ability instead of this weird dot-hybrid that we use on both ST and AoE.
Also, lol at the Meme Vortex buff.

[Socialhealer]

That's exactly what I said in another thread. They have NO idea how to balance or what is going on with a class/spec.

Another example:

Beast Mastery
Cobra Shot damage increased by 46%.

How bad do you have to be at balancing that after a whole PTR you end up buffing something for almost 50% 4 days after release? Lol.

happened to lava burst, it was buffed 10% 35/33% and 4% over the course of WoD, it took an entire beta and a 2 year expansion to realise it was almost 50% undertuned? then going into legion it was buffed another 25% NEVER expect blizzard to be competent with balancing it's literally a slot machine.

i mean icefury was just buffed from 180% to 900% spellpower, imagine monkeys rolling dice, you've now understand how all balancing is done.

[Ianus]

i must agree they are totally shit at basic math and analyzing what some spec needs.. they whine how its hard to balance 30 specs .. no wonder heroes of the storm is crap.. what would they do if there are 100+ heroes to balance like dota or lol.. f scrubs

[Deleted]

So with 2p we basically play the same like last patch? Aaaay lez go.

As much as it´s making me happy now, looking at the FoA changes I must say that if the ballancing process doesn´t improve to a point where I feel that Blizzard is taking this seriously I won´t make the mistake ever again and play more then the starting weeks of an expansion. It actually was my first time to play from the start and continue after the starting weeks and seeing all my effort go to shit was such a bad feeling that I can´t belive a game does that to you. I guess everything you invest time in gets important for you...

[Hexian]

Wait, so wtf is going on with FoA?

Its like the poor Dev who designed FoA won a bet to have the spell be good for...a week.

[Azelas]

So with 2p we basically play the same like last patch? Aaaay lez go.

well not quite because we don't have boulderfist. But yeah, very similar. Except worse because overall the skills got nerfed.

[Darleth]

well not quite because we don't have boulderfist. But yeah, very similar. Except worse because overall the skills got nerfed.

Wat.
Even before the planned hotfix-buffs BF was one of the higher simming talent choices with Nighthold 4pc.

[Jakexe]

That doom vortex buff has been a long time coming, such a piss weak thing for a golden trait.

Good to see they've noticed a issue, but now I sit here with my 35 ele weapon that I maxed out over the last few days, wondering what to do. I reverted back to the old spec because it just seemed better in M+, gonna have to try it out again now. Just as I start to love ele.

[Imnick]

Wait, so wtf is going on with FoA?

Its like the poor Dev who designed FoA won a bet to have the spell be good for...a week.

IMO they just don't want us to cast any AOE spell on single target.
This was already true with 4 set, if they manage to make all of them less MS efficient on one target than LL then we'll stop cleaving while doing single target damage.

Which is like, actually pretty good tbh. Less accidental hits on ichors etc.

Too early for people to be guessing what our talents will be. Sims are being run. Will post them here when they are finished.

- - - Updated - - -

Sim time boys:

With no tier pieces:



Looks like an expected gain of about 10k DPS!
We'll use basically the same talents as right now.
The gap between OC/FoA and BF/Tempest is smaller, but it's still 10k less DPS (as opposed to ~20k on live).

Note that this is without Legendaries. The Aikanu/TN/Hailstorm build is probably real.

Legendaries, 2P and 4P sims as they are done.

[Deleted]

Meh, so it´s better but probably won´t cut it. For a class that has mostly just brings ST our dmg may still remain a joke. Feelsbademan. Maybe it changes with tier19, legendaries or just by us playing better, I am trying to stay optimistic even tho the numbers look grim

[Imnick]

Meh, so it´s better but probably won´t cut it. For a class that has mostly just brings ST our dmg may still remain a joke. Feelsbademan. Maybe it changes with tier19, legendaries or just by us playing better, I am trying to stay optimistic even tho the numbers look grim

Remember, at the same time as we go up other people are going down, or sideways.
Shadow got it pretty bad, although admittedly Ret wasn't touched as much as I expected :P