Warlords of Draenor Beta Patch Notes Update - July 22

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Warlords of Draenor Beta Patch Notes Update - July 22
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Raid Utility Balance
  • Hunter
    • Aspect of the Fox is a new ability for all Hunters.
      • Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.
    • A minor Raid utility ability (to-be-determined) will be added for Hunters.

Death Knight
Miscellaneous
  • Conversion no longer has an initial tick, and now costs 15 Runic Power/second for Blood, 10 20 Runic Power/second for Frost, and 20 10 Runic Power/second for Unholy.

Druid
Ability Consolidation and Refinement
  • Thick Hide has been removed and its effects have been incorporated into Bear Form for Guardian Druids.
    • Bear Form now increases armor by 600% 330% for all Druid specializations, and no longer increases Haste and Critical Strike from items by 50%, but instead causes Haste to reduce the global cooldown
    • For Guardian Druids, Bear Form now also reduces magical damage taken by 25%, reduces physical damage taken by 12%, reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%, and reduces chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.
  • Tiger’s Fury is now usable during Berserk.

Summary of changes to Balance:
That's the basics of the new Moonkin rotation. There’s room for improvement beyond that, learning to optimally maintain both periodic damage effects while maximizing their damage with the strongest Eclipse effect, timing Starsurge to optimize the benefit of its buff, make use of Starfall and Hurricane for area damage, and taking advantage of the strengths of each side (such as Moonfire and Sunfire having significant differences now). Here are the full details of the changes.

Details of changes to Balance:
  • Eclipse has been redesigned.
    • The damage of damage-over-time effects changes dynamically as Eclipse changes.
  • Moonfire now has a base duration of 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Starfire and Starsurge critical strikes. Upon reaching 100 Lunar Energy, the next Moonfire deals 100% additional initial damage.
  • Sunfire is no longer its own spell and replaces Moonfire on the action bar whenever Balance Energy is on the Solar side. Sunfire now has a base duration of 24 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Wrath and Starsurge critical strikes. Enemies may still suffer from both Moonfire and Sunfire’s periodic damage components simultaneously. Upon reaching 100 Solar Energy, the next Sunfire deals 100% additional initial damage.

Restoration Changes

Mage
Talent Revisions
  • Ice Ward was changed to make it more competitive with the rest of its talent row. Ice Ward now causes the next 3 attackers (up from 1) to trigger a Frost Nova.

One of the most problematic Talent rows in the game has been the Mage level-90 row. The primary theme of the row was mana, which only Arcane Mages actually cared about. Bonus damage was added in, making it functional for all Mages, but muddled in its goals. Additionally, some of them just weren't fun to play with. We've revised the row to be purely about damage, and made them have less maintenance cost. Arcane Mages will have enough mana regeneration without these Talents to perform well.

  • Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation. Mirror Image now inherit 100% 50% of the Mage’s Spell Power (up from 5%), last 40 seconds (up from 30 seconds), and have a 2 minutes cooldown (down from 3 minutes).

Paladin
Ability Consolidation and Refinement
There were a few mergers of passive abilities, and some tweaks to a couple of abilities.

Protection Changes
For Protection, we tweaked Eternal Flame in order to reduce its massive self-healing amount, and provide better balance between talents on that row. We also added a new passive, Shining Protector, in order to give defensive value to the new Multistrike stat. Holy Wrath’s damage and cooldown were also increased, and Sanctified Wrath changed to buff it further, in order to give Protection Paladins more burst threat and damage, while retaining its core damage-splitting identity.

  • Holy Wrath’s damage has been increased by 100%, and its cooldown increased to 15 seconds (up from 9 seconds).
  • Sanctified Wrath for Protection Paladins has been redesigned.

Warlock
Demonology Changes
We were unsatisfied with Grimoire of Sacrifice for Demonology. Fundamentally, it did not fit Demonology’s theme to sacrifice their pet, full time. We had toyed with ideas where it acted as a temporary cooldown for Demonology, but have decided to replace it with a new talent, which is more theme-appropriate, and fits well against the competition in that talent row.

  • Grimoire of Sacrifice is no longer available to Demonology Warlocks and has a new talent, Grimoire of Synergy in its place.
    • Grimoire of Synergy: When the Warlock or their demon deals damage, there is a chance to trigger Demonic Synergy, granting the other one 15% increased damage for 15 seconds.

Warrior
Ability Consolidation and Refinement
  • Thunder Clap now costs 15 30 Rage, and also reduces the movement speed of nearby enemies by 50% for 6 sec.
  • Ultimatum’s effects have been merged into baseline Shield Slam.

Fury Changes
Fury Warriors received a few additional changes. In particular, Heroic Strike has been removed for Fury Warriors, and modified Wild Strike to fill the role of quick excess Rage dump. We also made a revision to the Critical Strike chance of Bloodthirst to make them less crit-dependant. A new glyph has been added which gives Fury Warriors a choice for a notably different playstyle. Auto attack damage had become too high, so we also moved some damage from that into Execute (which has been changed to deal damage based on Weapon Damage, instead of just Attack Power). In order to make sure that you’re able to spend all of your resources within each Colossus Smash window, we added an extension to it onto Raging Blow. Plus, we've updated some to spell alerts to improve usability.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Warlords of Draenor Beta Patch Notes Update - July 22 started by chaud View original post
Published on 2014-07-22 11:35 PM
51 Comments
Comments 51 Comments
  1. Tydrane's Avatar
    The whole "getting rid of casting-on-the-run" thing is really getting kind of stupid. I know their clarifications on that have been that they wanted to minimise rather than eradicate it, but it would have been better to just say that they wanted to simply change its functionality to be based on short-term cooldown abilities as opposed to passives.

    It's kind of stupid to give the ability to Hunters, though - and to make it an Aspect? Have they stated whether the hunter's previous aspect will be re-applied, or will they have to do that manually? Most players use some kind of buff manager to alert them of buffs like this, but what about players who don't? It all seems more than a little ill-conceived if you ask me.
  1. Unholyground's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Steamwheedle View Post
    The whole "getting rid of casting-on-the-run" thing is really getting kind of stupid. I know their clarifications on that have been that they wanted to minimise rather than eradicate it, but it would have been better to just say that they wanted to simply change its functionality to be based on short-term cooldown abilities as opposed to passives.

    It's kind of stupid to give the ability to Hunters, though - and to make it an Aspect? Have they stated whether the hunter's previous aspect will be re-applied, or will they have to do that manually? Most players use some kind of buff manager to alert them of buffs like this, but what about players who don't? It all seems more than a little ill-conceived if you ask me.
    It is just a cool-down that will be a raid wide buff that doesn't replace the hunters aspect while active.

    The no casting on the run thing is fine, instant casts should be the only thing cast-able while on the run aside from a few cool down based spells that allow it. As it sits now in PvP especially the power some of the classes like warlocks and shaman have is too insane to allow it it to continue.
  1. -Zo-'s Avatar
    Fox is interesting. Wonder if they can be chained from multiple hunters.

    As a healer, not sure I like the idea of a buff I have no control over changing whether movement cancels spells. Sometimes you want movement to cancel a spell. Or I do anyway. Alysrazor was weird like that too, but at least I had control (and it was constant, not just 6s).
  1. Shodan30's Avatar
    I dont get the fox thing. a 6 second buff every 3 minutes from a hunter? blizzard just needs to accept that casters need to move while casting and make it baseline that casters get some kind of ability to move during a cast without making it trivial (say for 2 second you can move once you start casting a spell before the casting timer resets, this way you can make positioning changes and finish the spell you were casting, but put it on a 10 second cooldown or something).
  1. Unholyground's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shodan30 View Post
    I dont get the fox thing. a 6 second buff every 3 minutes from a hunter? blizzard just needs to accept that casters need to move while casting and make it baseline that casters get some kind of ability to move during a cast without making it trivial (say for 2 second you can move once you start casting a spell before the casting timer resets, this way you can make positioning changes and finish the spell you were casting, but put it on a 10 second cooldown or something).
    It is a PvP casualty, you can't have it for every caster, melee would become useless in PvP.
  1. Sxythor's Avatar
    The hunter ability "Aspect of the Fox" sounds awesome dude, can't wait
  1. TrollShaman's Avatar
    cooldown of Aspect of the Fox seems awfully long just to let casters let off 2-3 spells on the move.
  1. mimee's Avatar
    Like I wanted to have a raid cooldown ability.. Aspect of the fox is just a chore for the future.
  1. Aelric70's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by mimee View Post
    Like I wanted to have a raid cooldown ability.. Aspect of the fox is just a chore for the future.
    One that will sift the raid-worthy from the lazy huntards.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by TrollShaman View Post
    cooldown of Aspect of the Fox seems awfully long just to let casters let off 2-3 spells on the move.
    Depends on frequency of need (like a phase shift) occurs. Doesnt say whether or not 2 hunters in same raid could effectively double the availability. Assume cd only affects the individual use, but could end up more like Time Warp
  1. Xetenor's Avatar
    I am a bit lost on balance changes. Are they taking moonfire away and putting just one dot spell? They are really making nice changes to druids especially guardian. Wow!
  1. Cathryn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Xetenor View Post
    I am a bit lost on balance changes. Are they taking moonfire away and putting just one dot spell? They are really making nice changes to druids especially guardian. Wow!
    The way it works in beta right now is there is one button for moonfire/sunfire. During the lunar phase (beginning before you start casting, all the way through the lunar bar, stays until you hit the midpoint that moves you to the solar half of the bar), the button is moonfire. If I read this correctly, during lunar empowerment (when you're at the very end of the lunar bar), moonfire will cause 100% damage when cast, in addition to adding the dot (the dot still exists). On the solar half of the bar, the same as above exists, but for sunfire instead. Both moonfire and sunfire dots can be on a target.

    So basically, both spells still exist, but they now share a button and change at the time the -fire is most appropriate to use.
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