Patch 7.2.5 Hotfixes - July 24

[chaud]

Patch 7.2.5 Hotfixes - July 24

Class, Raid, Items, and PvP hotfixes below will go live with maintenance in each region.

Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Frost

• Fixed a bug preventing Hungering Rune Weapon from generating a Rune at the correct rate of once every 1.5 seconds.
  
• All damage abilities increased by 5%.

Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Vengeance
  
  • Demon Spikes physical damage reduction increased to 12% (was 10%).
    
  • Fracture damage decreased by 5%.
    
  • Spirit Bomb damage decreased by 10%.
    

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Protection
  
  • Increased the damage done by the following abilities by 4%: Avenger's Shield, Judgment, Hammer of the Righteous, Blessed Hammer, Consecration, Shield of the Righteous, Eye of Tyr.
    
• Retribution
  
  • Blade of Justice damage increased by 10%.
    
  • Crusader Strike damage increased by 10%.
    
  • Zeal damage increased by 10%.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Fixed a bug where Elusiveness reduced the amount of AOE damage reduction Feint provided.
  

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Holy
  
  • Light of Dawn now functions correctly with Aura of Sacrifice.
    

Class Halls

• Calydus will now appear if a player can accept or turn-in a quest with him, even if he's on a mission.

Dungeons and Raids

• Tomb of Sargeras
  
  • The Fallen Avatar
    
    • The Fallen Avatar’s health is reduced by 5% in Mythic difficulty.
      
  • Kil’jaeden
    
    • Kil'jaeden's health reduced by 5% in Mythic difficulty.
      
    • Armageddon now creates 6 Armageddon Rains (was 8) in Mythic difficulty.
      
    • Illidan's Sightless Gaze now deals less damage in all difficulties.
      
    • Demonic Obelisk now spawns 3 Obelisks on the first cast in Mythic difficulty.
      

Items

• Spectral Thurible will no longer damage creatures you are not in combat with.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Arms
  
  • The Great Storm's Eye damage bonus per stack reduced to 2% (was 4%).
    
  • Ayala's Stone Heart now procs 40% less often for Arms Warriors.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• All Specs
  
  • Mantle of the Master Assassin duration reduced to 5 seconds (was 6 seconds).
• Subtlety
  
  • Denial of the Half-Giants cooldown reduction reduced to 0.2 seconds per combo point spent (was 0.3 seconds).

Player versus Player
Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Balance
  
  • PvP Template Armor reduced by 10%.
    
  • Bladed Feathers grants 11% additional armor per rank in PvP (was 22.5% per rank).
    
  • Ironfeather Armor now grants an additional 25% armor (was 50%).
    
  • Celestial Guardian now grants 10% spell damage reduction (was 20%).
    
  • Moonkin Form now grants 125% additional armor in PvP situation (was 200%).
• Restoration
  
  • PvP Template Intellect increased by 2%.
    
  • PvP Template Mastery increased by 20%.
    

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Survival
  
  • Holy Priests with Greater Fade active can now be correctly interrupted by Muzzle
    

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Frost
  
  • Frigid Winds increases chilling effects by 10% in PvP situations (was 15%).
    
  • Chilled reduces the movement speed of targets by 40% in PvP situations (was 50%).
    

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Holy
  
  • Ray of Hope's cooldown is increased to 60 seconds (was 45 seconds).
    
  • PvP Template Intellect reduced by 4%.
    
  • PvP Template Mastery reduced by 30%.
    
  • The heal over time effect of Renew now heals for an additional 75% in PvP (was 100%).
    

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Restoration
  
  • Riptide's heal is increased by 15% in PvP situations (was an additional 30%).
    
  • PvP Template Intellect reduced by 3%.
    

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)

• Affliction
  
  • PvP Template Intellect increased by 3%.
    
• Destruction
  
  • PvP Template Armor increased by 30%.
    
  • PvP Template Versatility increased by 5%.
    

Blue Posts

Frost Death Knight in Patch 7.3
Row 75 on next PTR:

Inexorable Assault updated to: "While in combat with no enemy within 8 yards, you gain Inexorable Assault every 1 sec. Each stack causes your next autoattack to deal [100%AP] additional Frost damage."
It's stealing the distance-based mechanic from the proposed White Walker--where we agree it didn't always accomplish as much as we'd want. Also, the attack-based version of IA would likely have been awkward to waterproof against weird rotational shenanigans.

The third talent, this iteration, will be a version of Volatile Shielding that increases AMS's absorb and RP generation (and nothing else). In keeping with IA--we're experimenting a bit with allowing some damage payoff in a "utility" row in the case of a spec like Frost that isn't getting strong movement bonuses. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Elemental Discussions - Patch 7.2.5
Few updates--potentially not on the upcoming PTR:

1) Not going forward with the Maelstrom generation change. It's generally way too much disruption and potentially new problems introduced for something that's meant to be a somewhat minor set of changes in this patch. Given all the feedback that was concerned about the slowdown it would cause on 2-3 targets, it's okay to leave Chain Lightning generating resource so quickly on 5 targets--it's a less bad problem overall, and also what people are already used to on live.

Reverting the Maelstrom change is also effectively a further buff to Earthquake damage. This should be a clear net buff to steady AoE where Earthquake can be used well (which is not every AoE situation). It may not completely cause Earthquake to surpass Chain Lightning, but it is a big step in that direction. We'll likely tweak numbers further to balance all these concerns/goals. Namely:
--Helping out Earthquake substantially
--Not causing a large buff to AoE damage in steady Earthquake-friendly situations
--Not causing a large nerf to Chain Lightning-only burst (which is a strength that Elemental is used to in Legion)

2) Slightly buffing Elemental Blast's own damage to mostly cancel out the reduction to the stat buff, as discussed earlier.

3) Buffing Frost Shock in parallel with Earth Shock. We still need to look into Frost Shock interactions with the 7.3 set bonus if we go forward with that bonus. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

[phantomlink]

little quick on those KJ nerfs

[Azarak]

little quick on those KJ nerfs

Considering KJ took longer to kill than any other boss, to the point where only one guild killed him after several weeks of all day raiding and it took the second guild over a week later, it's pretty warranted. And we STILL don't have more than 2 guilds that have killed him. I don't even know if most guilds ever would kill it the world's best are still struggling.

[Marrilaife]

Oh look, prot paladin buffs... A bit too little too late, Blizz, majority of them already rerolled to DKs and Monks judging from number of parses from TOS vs NH, and the meme "prot pala is shit" already established itself, Asmongold said it on his vid so incoming all the pugs and guilds "LF tank no Pala", since youtubers are who dictates the opinion of the masses nowadays. Sigh.

Same can be said about Ret, the buffs are probably too small and too late to fix the tarnished rep they got coming into TOS.

[MidnyteTV]

Oh look, prot paladin buffs... A bit too little too late, Blizz, majority of them already rerolled to DKs and Monks judging from number of parses from TOS vs NH, and the meme "prot pala is shit" already established itself, Asmongold said it on his vid so incoming all the pugs and guilds "LF tank no Pala", since youtubers are who dictates the opinion of the masses nowadays. Sigh.

Same can be said about Ret, the buffs are probably too small and too late to fix the tarnished rep they got coming into TOS.

Pretty much every guild that isn't Method or Exorsus just isn't good enough to kill that boss, hence the nerfs. Basically, anybody not ranked 1 or 2 shall forever have a "post-nerf" KJ kill.

Kudos to Method and Exorsus. They are the best guilds in the world.

[Deleted]

Finally another nerf to Fracture and Spirit Bomb, however such small amounts won't do much in the grand scheme of things, they will still be brokenly overpowered.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Finally another nerf to Fracture and Spirit Bomb, however such small amounts won't do much in the grand scheme of things, they will still be brokenly overpowered.

???? What game are you playing? How many guilds in the world-first race used VDHs? What logs are you looking at? By my calculation, these nerfs will be just about enough to drop VDHs below monks and bears for damage, when both of those specs already rank higher for survivability. Meanwhile the 2% buff to Spikes won't solve anything. VDH vulnerability has primarily been when Spikes are down. Increasing recharge rate for Spikes might help, but 2% to their strength not so much.

[Rathys]

Buff Templar's Verdict by 10%as well and then maybe we'll talk. These ret buffs aren't going to do anything.

And the prot buffs, hah. What about survivability?

[pythqt]

"Denial of the Half-Giants cooldown reduction reduced to 0.2 seconds per combo point spent (was 0.3 seconds)." that isn't what denial of the half giants does great job blizzard maybe read your own items....

[Araitik]

Nerf to VDH is not justified, how exactly a nerf to damage is going to help survivability ?

Edit: Also, back with the chainsaw for those PvP changes I see ...

[Deleted]

Buff Templar's Verdict by 10%as well and then maybe we'll talk. These ret buffs aren't going to do anything.

Sad but TRUE !!!!!

[Deleted]

Pretty much every guild that isn't Method or Exorsus just isn't good enough to kill that boss, hence the nerfs. Basically, anybody not ranked 1 or 2 shall forever have a "post-nerf" KJ kill.

Kudos to Method and Exorsus. They are the best guilds in the world.

In their post-WF-kill interview Method folks mentioned 10 nerfs that had to happen for them to be able to kill KJ M. They also elaborated on some of them in more detail. Nobody in the world has an actual pre-nerf KJ M kill.

[Currently Retired]

Butchering HPriest in PVP even more I see.

[Deleted]

???? What game are you playing? How many guilds in the world-first race used VDHs? What logs are you looking at? By my calculation, these nerfs will be just about enough to drop VDHs below monks and bears for damage, when both of those specs already rank higher for survivability. Meanwhile the 2% buff to Spikes won't solve anything. VDH vulnerability has primarily been when Spikes are down. Increasing recharge rate for Spikes might help, but 2% to their strength not so much.

World first race? Dude no one cares about the world first race. Spirit Bomb and Fracture are just way too powerful compared to the other talents on their respective rows, to a ridiculous amount, it nearly or outright doubles your damage depending on the situation even though Blizzard themselves have stated quite recently that a talent tier should be around 5-10 % increase of your damage, not the insane amounts that Fracture and Spirit Bomb provide.

Generally, we aim for talent tiers to be more in the 5-10% range. Very high values can both have distortive effects on the spec and make it hard to balance other talents on the same tier.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...4325347?page=2

They have nerfed Spirit Bomb twice now, first time by 33 % and this second time 10 %, somehow I have a feeling that it will still be way too powerful.

[Deleted]

A wet noodle is god tier in dps compared to a VDH without fracture and spirit bomb. If they bring fracture and SpB to that 10% range, they'll have to buff massively everything else.

[Deleted]

A wet noodle is god tier in dps compared to a VDH without fracture and spirit bomb. If they bring fracture and SpB to that 10% range, they'll have to buff massively everything else.

It's exactly as the developer said, very high values causes distortive effects and makes it hard to balance other talents on the same tier, or in this case the base-line of the class itself. A talent should not have this large an impact on a class' performance, which is why I want both Fracture and Spirit Bomb nerfed further, because until they nerf those into the ground they won't improve anything else.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

World first race? Dude no one cares about the world first race. Spirit Bomb and Fracture are just way too powerful compared to the other talents on their respective rows, to a ridiculous amount, it nearly or outright doubles your damage depending on the situation even though Blizzard themselves have stated quite recently that a talent tier should be around 5-10 % increase of your damage, not the insane amounts that Fracture and Spirit Bomb provide.



https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...4325347?page=2

They have nerfed Spirit Bomb twice now, first time by 33 % and this second time 10 %, somehow I have a feeling that it will still be way too powerful.

If they were buffing something else enough to compensate, I'd be down. But DPS was really the only reason to bring VDH to high end raid. Take that away, and it's back to watching bears and monks get all the work.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Help out Earthquake by removing it from the game.

[nicode]

Ret buffs seem like too little too late for Tomb.

On most Ret parses I see those abilities account for around 30% of damage, so a 10% buff results in a 2.5-3.5% overall buff to the spec for single target. On aoe and cleave fights it will be very much less (unless they also buffed Divine Hammer but didn't call it out). Seems pretty lackluster.