The blue post only made me more confused. So what do we know.
- Nighthold is set to release January 17
- Patch 7.1.5 still needs a lot of balancing work
- Patch 7.1.5 is not linked to the release of Nighthold
- They woudn't drop a major patch in the middle of a raid release
So this can only mean 2 scenarios:
1) Patch 7.1.5 will hit before January 17 (which means quite a bit of rush, and I doubt there will be enough time to properly tune/balance everything with the hollidays incoming aswell)
2) Patch 7.1.5 will hit looooooong after January 17, and serves as a 'hidden nerf' and gives people fresh incentive to progress Nighthold if they got stuck at any point. (which means we do a full tier with the current unbalanced state of classes, which feels bad).
Both scenarios sound suboptimal if you ask me, I really would have linked 7.1.5 to Nighthold release if I was blizzard and delay Nighthold a little bit for 7.1.5 to get properly ready.