Upcoming Class and Trinket Changes, Patch 7.2 - Artifact Traits and Crusade, Tweets

Update: Added tonight's hotfixes.
Update: Added Convergence of Fate changes

Patch 7.1.5 Hotfixes - January 23
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Classes
[All class changes below will take effect with weekly realm restarts in each region.]
  • Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Feral
      • Increased the damage of most Feral spells and abilities by 8% (Ashamane's Frenzy, Brutal Slash, Ferocious Bite, Maim, Moonfire, Rake, Shred, Swipe, Thrash, Rip).
        • Developers’ Notes: Feral's playstyle feels good, but isn't putting up the numbers that it should be, so we're giving them an across-the-board damage buff.

  • Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Combat Experience (Pet Passive) now increases the damage of primary pets by 60% (was 50%).
      • Developers’ Notes: This is primarily a damage buff to Beast Mastery, but will have a tiny benefit to Survival and occasionally Marksmanship as well.
    • Marksmanship
      • Arcane Shot now generates 8 Focus (was 5).
      • Multi-Shot now generates 3 Focus per target hit (was 2).
      • Sidewinders damage increased by 33%.
        • Developers’ Notes: Marksmanship has given a lot of feedback that the rotation often winds up casting too many consecutive Focus generators. We are making two changes: first, helping avoid that problem by increasing the Focus generation of Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot. Second, making it more attractive to use Sidewinders in more situations, for players who prefer the pacing of the rotation with that talent.

  • Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Arcane
      • Increased the damage of most Arcane spells and abilities by 8% (Arcane Barrage, Arcane Blast, Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Orb, Nether Tempest, Supernova).
      • Overpowered now increases the damage and mana cost bonuses of Arcane Power to 60% (was 70%).
      • Amplification now increases Arcane Missiles damage by 12% (was 15%).
        • Developers’ Notes: Arcane has been doing well in Patch 7.1.5, but its numbers are lacking a bit. We're giving them an across-the-board damage buff, but tempering that with small reductions to a couple of new talents that are proving to be too strong.
    • Fire
      • Increased the damage of most Fire spells and abilities by 3% (Blast Wave, Cinderstorm, Dragon's Breath, Fire Blast, Fireball, Flame Patch, Flamestrike, Living Bomb, Meteor, Phoenix Flames, Pyroblast, Scorch).
      • Pyroblast mana cost reduced by 20%.
      • Flamestrike mana cost reduced by 17%.
        • Developers’ Notes: Under certain circumstances, it was possible for Fire to run out of mana. It's only intended that mana is a constraint on Fire's utility, not its damage.
    • Frost
      • Increased the damage of most Frost spells and abilities by 4% (Ebonbolt, Blizzard, Cone of Cold, Flurry, Frost Bomb, Frostbolt, Frozen Orb, Ice Lance, Ice Nova, Waterbolt, Ray of Frost, Water Jet).
      • Comet Storm damage increased by 30%.
      • Flurry now fires its missiles faster.
        • Developers’ Notes: Comet Storm is failing to live up to expectations, so we're buffing its damage. The Flurry change will help Flurry feel more responsive, while simultaneously solving a potential issue where Winter's Chill could apply to two Ice Lances (instead of just one, as intended) at extremely high Haste levels.

  • Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Brewmaster
      • Keg Smash damage increased by 10%, and it no longer deals reduced damage to 6+ targets.
      • Breath of Fire damage increased 11%.
        • Developers’ Notes: Brewmasters could use a bit of help on damage, especially in AoE.

  • Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Retribution
      • Crusade now increases damage and Haste by 3% per stack (was 3.5%).
      • Blade of Justice damage increased by 20%, unchanged in PvP.
        • Developers’ Notes: Retribution's total damage is looking quite strong in 7.1.5, which is fine on its own. However, how that damage is delivered matters quite a bit as well. We've been seeing more and more than Paladins find that the optimal way to maximize their performance is to focus everything they can on boosting their damage during Crusade. This creates a number of problems, including: Crusade feels mandatory, your damage feels very unrewarding outside of Crusade, trinkets and artifact traits are viewed as either amazing or terrible based on whether they synergize with Crusade, and others.
        • As such, we're going to tone down Crusade, and compensate with a buff to Blade of Justice. For those that had maximized Crusade to an extreme degree, this may result in a small overall nerf – this is intended. This change also helps prevent Divine Hammer from being too dominant in single-target situations.

  • Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
    • Destruction
      • Chaos Bolt damage increased by 9%.
      • Rain of Fire damage increased by 30%.
      • Cataclysm damage increased by 29%.
        • Developers’ Notes: Destruction's damage isn't as high as it should be. In particular, some of its spells that should feel the most rewarding aren't hitting hard enough, especially in AoE situations. We're buffing the damage of those spells.

Dungeons and Raids
  • Fixed a bug where some Warlords dungeon bosses were not always dropping loot.
  • The Windwalker Monk Vestments of Enveloped Dissonance 2-piece bonus and the Restoration Druid Garb of the Astral Warden 4-piece bonus should now scale down correctly in Timewalking dungeons.
  • Siege of Orgrimmar
    • Fixed a bug where Garrosh Hellscream would not drop loot on Raid Finder difficulty.
  • The Nighthold
    • High Botanist Tel’arn
      • High Botanist Tel’arn now takes more time between using abilities on Normal difficulty.
    • Gul’dan
      • Resolved an issue where Resonant Barrier would fail to apply its effects if the player was under the effects of immunities.
      • Resolved an issue where the Essence of Aman'thul abilities would disappear from players when using an immunity effect.

Items
  • Windwalker Monks who unequip the Vestments of Enveloped Dissonance should no longer gain the 4-piece bonus.
  • Feretory of Souls should no longer be activated by a spell that did not complete casting.

Player versus Player
  • [After realm maintenance in each region.] All Artifact Power rewards from Rated PvP have been substantially increased.
    • Note: The PvP UI will not properly reflect the amount of Artifact Power that will be rewarded until a future patch.
  • [After realm maintenance in each region.] Season 19 Achievements that should not have been granted have been correctly removed.
  • You can no longer target a flag carrier with Guardian of the Forgotten Queen.
  • Demon Hunter
    • Eye of Leotheras will no longer scale with increased damage, and instead will always deal a maximum of 6% of the target’s health in damage each time it activates.
  • Mage
    • Ray of Frost cannot be channeled if the Mage is interrupted and locked out of the Frost School, as intended.
  • Warlock
    • Cremation now correctly only applies the damage-over-time effect of Immolate. Cremation no longer allows Havoc to spread Immolate to a target who is out of line of sight of the Warlock when Incinerate or Immolate are cast.

Professions
  • Archaeology
    • The Nor'danil Wellspring digsite is no longer displayed in the middle of the ocean.

Quests
  • Players on the quest "Fate of the Nightborne" will no longer be sent into a separate phase of the Nighthold until they have spoken to Oculeth to begin the quest.
  • Felsworn Defilers now spawn in more locations during “The Felsworn Must Fall”.

Upcoming Class Tuning Changes - 1/24/17
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Updated the original post with a couple of additions/revisions:

  • Arcane Mage: Damage increase on most spells went from 5% to 8%
  • Fire Mage: Damage of most spells increased by 3%
  • Frost Mage: Comet Storm damage increase went from 24% to 30%, and damage of most spells increased by 4%

Convergence of Fate Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Here's the changes we're looking to make for Convergence of Fate's interaction with some of the throughput cooldowns it affects. These numbers are compared to the trinket's current performance on live, and are not additive with each other.

Frost Death Knight
  • with Empower Rune Weapon: +10% proc rate
  • with Hungering Rune Weapon: -23% proc rate

Unholy Death Knight
  • with Summon Gargoyle: +68% proc rate
  • with Dark Arbiter: no change

Feral Druid
  • with Berserk: no change
  • with Incarnation: -45%
    • Note: Incarnation was not properly working with Convergence, which has now been fixed. The number given here is relative to Convergence's proc rate with Berserk.

Windwalker Monk
  • with Storm, Earth, and Fire: -62% proc rate
  • with Serenity: -75% proc rate

Retribution Paladin
  • with Avenging Wrath: +250% proc rate
  • with Crusade: +25% proc rate
    • Note: This change should bring Convergence back to roughly its original effectiveness for Ret Paladins who are not using Crusade.
Additionally, on the topic of tank trinkets, we'll be increasing Animated Exoskeleton's maximum shield amount by 33%. We're continuing to investigate tank trinkets, but that change will make it in for this week's hotfix.

Upcoming Trinket Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
In general, we’ve found that our tuning on trinkets which relied on a direct damage or healing effect (as opposed to their raw stats) have come up a bit short this expansion. To help address that, we’re making the following changes:

  • Claw of the Crystalline Scorpid: Damage increased by 30%.
  • Arcanogolem Digit: Damage increased by 30%.
  • Entwined Elemental Foci: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.
  • Might of Krosus: Base damage reduced by 25%, but is now always a critical strike.
    • The tooltip for Might of Krosus will display the amount of damage that will result from the critical hit, not the base damage.
    • Also fixed a bug where the cooldown was incorrectly being reduced if Might of Krosus damaged at least 3 targets.
  • Draught of Souls: The Use effect of this trinket now respects the global cooldown.
    • The damage of this trinket is now reduced by 30% for Unholy Death Knights (was reduced by 40%).
    • Designer Notes: Since Draught of Souls deals Shadow Damage, it’s increased by Unholy’s Mastery, which means we needed to reduce its base damage to keep its overall value similar to other classes. It’s currently a little too low, however, so we’re increasing the damage it deals for Unholy.
  • Icon of Rot: Damage increased by 40%.
  • Pharamere's Forbidden Grimoire: Damage increased by 85%.
  • Fury of the Burning Sky: Damage increased by 40%.
  • Star Gate: Damage increased by 30%.
  • Aluriel's Mirror: Healing-over-time amount increased by 140%. Detonation effect reduced by 35%.
    • Designer Notes: Aluriel’s Mirror’s detonation effect is strong when it activates, but hard to rely on. We’re increasing the heal-over-time effect significantly to improve the up-front value of this trinket, and reducing the detonation effect slightly to compensate.
  • Perfectly Preserved Cake: Absorb amount increased by 140%.
  • Etraeus' Celestial Map: The amount of Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste granted by this item’s proc has been increased by 5%.

As for Convergence of Fates, we’re spending a little extra time to make sure our changes here are as comprehensive as possible, so we don’t have final numbers yet. However, we can share our overall plan for the changes we intend to make. We intend to reduce its base effectiveness (before talents) for Windwalkers, and increase its base effectiveness for Retribution Paladins and Frost and Unholy Death Knights. Separately, we plan to adjust its effectiveness individually for the following talents:

We’re planning to make these changes with the next weekly restarts, alongside the release of Mythic Nighthold. Overall, this should make the trinkets in Nighthold more competitive with other trinkets available elsewhere in the expansion.

Does this mean that the CoF changes will be there as well with the reset this week, since you said you wanted a little extra time to ensure they were as comprehensible as possible?
Yes. The exact numbers haven't been completely finalized yet, but the plan is to have that finished in time for weekly resets.

We'll look into Draught and its effect for Warriors a bit more. Worth noting that the change to have it on the GCD does mean the trinket will be a bit weaker after these hotfixes for most classes (Unholy DK being the exception, due to the damage increase).

Regarding the Unholy damage reduction for Draught, again, that's only there to counteract the fact that Unholy's Mastery increases Draught's damage. Either way, its damage is going up by ~17% with this hotfix, which is pretty substantial.

We'll also take another look at Nightblooming Frond.

How about tank trinkets ? they are completely underwhelming, my 885 mythic + trinkets have higher absorbs and stam ......
Tank trinkets are on our to-do list, but not for this round of trinket tuning. We agree that they need some help.

Patch 7.2 - Class Feedback
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.2 Artifact Traits
Tuning on the datamined 7.2 traits is very preliminary and/or nonexistent at the moment. I don't doubt there is a point at which additional duration on Combustion could add the correct amount of DPS for an artifact trait, even if that turns out to be a higher amount than 1s due to Combustion being less bursty than it was in 7.1.

Phoenix's Warmth--we are considering changing the mechanic on this and similar artifact traits to something other than "nearest allies", so it doesn't feel like it's inducing some complicated positioning puzzle in raids that are trying to optimize DPS. That said, it will still likely feel random to an extent (in fact, it may well be "four random nearby allies"). (Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Patch 7.2 - Crusade
We are definitely keenly aware that people feel better when we fix a problem by buffing something, rather than fixing it by nerfing something. If you look across classes and talent rows in 7.1.5, you'll see the great majority of balance issues were addressed by buffing underperforming talents. There are a few factors that go into this decision though, and it generally has to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

One issue when balancing a lopsided talent row is whether we want the overall power of the spec to go slightly up or slightly down in the process. In the case of Retribution during our tuning adjustments for the opening of Nighthold, we intended to slightly nerf the topend performance of the spec (essentially, the performance of players stacking trinkets/relics/legendaries that all build around Crusade). I know there's no easy way to deliver that message, but hopefully it's at least worth clarifying that it's not some accident of how we chose to balance the L100 row. Players say "why couldn't we buff Divine Purpose instead of nerfing Crusade", for the very understandable reason that the former wouldn't have resulted in a slight DPS nerf. But we were conscious of the slight DPS nerf when we decided to do it this way.

Another factor is that there are sometimes limits on how powerful we want an individual talent to be, regardless of balance within the row. Divine Purpose and Crusade are both very strong talents, that have a significant impact on the rotation and playstyle of the spec (and as mentioned, on gear/talent/relic/etc. decisions), even at their current strength. Balancing Retribution L100 at an even higher point would start causing more issues--Divine Purpose would allow strings of multiple free finishers very often, Crusade would continue to represent a majority of the spec's damage within a cooldown, and Holy Wrath would have to get even more bursty to try to compete with the other two. Sometimes we have to be careful about addressing all balance problems by buffing two talents up to match the highest one, because it can lead to a lot of power creep on the importance of a single talent to an entire DPS rotation. (Official Forums)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
Loaded Dice - New Outlaw Gold Trait Feedback
It should be a DPS gain even for players who are optimizing well, because you will lose fewer Combo Points to rerolling Roll the Bones (and thereby gain Run Through damage).

We will monitor the tuning as always, but it seems likely that a guaranteed triple buff would be a lot stronger than it initially appears. If you know that a particular roll is going to be a triple, then you can make sure to set up a 54 second duration on it. And given the frequency of Adrenaline Rush, that would be a very high uptime on a guaranteed triple buff. True Bearing uptime would go way up due to this, which adds many Adrenaline Rushes to the rotation on average. That positive feedback loop on Outlaw is rather powerful, and we have to watch for it when setting up this trait, but will continue to keep an eye on how it's borne out when testing begins. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Battle.Net Balance
Wasnt the ingame token thing ment to come with 7.1.5? So you could add Battle.Net balance with it instead?
No, that feature is coming at a later time. (WarcraftDevs)

Classes
As a follow up; have you guys ever found your own internal sims to be wrong?
Oh yes, absolutely. We make mistakes like anybody else in our theorycraft. We just tend to catch those mistakes... (Celestalon)
...more often, and faster, because we're comparing to live data more often, and with much larger sample sizes. (Celestalon)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Upcoming Class and Trinket Changes, Patch 7.2 - Artifact Traits and Crusade, Tweets started by chaud View original post
Published on 2017-01-23 11:55 PM
54 Comments
Comments 54 Comments
  1. Nerraw's Avatar
    Well, I guess that's actual outright confirmation that we're getting the Bnet Balance token and it wasn't just a test or whatever.
  1. MatthewOU2015's Avatar
    Hopefully, I can replace my bloodthirsty instinct trinket and use the new NH trinkets.
  1. Pulp5850's Avatar
    Token balance: worst new of the day
  1. mmoce04a3b2ccc's Avatar
    Fire mage buffs for whatever reason, kek
  1. f3llyn's Avatar
    Drought of Souls - fun detected - fun nerfed
  1. Nitromonger's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Epsi View Post
    Fire mage buffs for whatever reason, kek
    Not sure if you've seen the results on the logs, but the only mages that are competing at all are the ones with BIS legendarys for cleave. On single target all 3 mage specs are at the bottom of the dps rankings.
  1. mmoc95657da104's Avatar
    dunno about the rest of those trinkets, but icon of rot is currently garbage because it procs once every 5 years, not because of the damage on the proc
  1. ImpTaimer's Avatar
    I don't know why they bother nerfing trinkets because of a class' mastery, when they can just make the mastery only affects class abilities.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nitromonger View Post
    Not sure if you've seen the results on the logs, but the only mages that are competing at all are the ones with BIS legendarys for cleave. On single target all 3 mage specs are at the bottom of the dps rankings.
    If almost every fight in NH has adds, how can there possibly be a "single target".

    And no all 3 mages specs are not "at the bottom". Anyone can cherrypick logs or sims to give whatever result they desire, especially thanks to sample sizes.
  1. mmocb55ce42dea's Avatar
    Cherrypick or not - this is a nice overview and also shows from how many parses these results are taken: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11/ There is always some flaw in it but can give an idea what happened now in the first week.
  1. Volitar's Avatar
    At this point I don't even understand the point of the PTR it seems like they don't even test anything. Patch goes live and we get a million hotfixes during week 1.
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Mages buffed again ?
    Like what ...
  1. Masterporatras's Avatar
    Let me understand. No changes for DH on Cof trinket....so we need to get the Legendary Shoulders to use this trinket because without them the trinket works really bad for almost all fights on Meta with 4 minutes CD. I can wait for months to get that Legendary Shoulders, maybe near the release of Tomb of Sargeras so I never will use that stupid trinket.... I think the developers are living on blizzardland
  1. Nitromonger's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Mhyroth View Post
    Mages buffed again ?
    Like what ...
    Because mages are doing so well right? /s I feel for hunters too, but at least they have survival as an option right now I guess.

  1. baileytfbk's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nitromonger View Post
    Because mages are doing so well right? /s I feel for hunters too, but at least they have survival as an option right now I guess.
    Survival as an option? yes because raid teams really want to switch out ranged for even more melee (not hardly any parses as survival in comparison to every other spec)
    Mages are at the lower end of the spectrum for a change, they will bounce back don't think they need a huge buff though

    HFC they were allover the top, EN they were top-mid now they are mid to low

    Only reason frost is parsing so low is because no-one plays it still because fire is still huge for adds damage
  1. mmoc2469da80bf's Avatar
    Rets DP is a "very strong talent" ???
    Are these alternate facts again ??
  1. mmoc106b8537bb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by baileytfbk View Post
    Survival as an option? yes because raid teams really want to switch out ranged for even more melee (not hardly any parses as survival in comparison to every other spec)
    Mages are at the lower end of the spectrum for a change, they will bounce back don't think they need a huge buff though

    HFC they were allover the top, EN they were top-mid now they are mid to low

    Only reason frost is parsing so low is because no-one plays it still because fire is still huge for adds damage
    Really? Learn to read statistics or go to school, lol. You are embrassing. Facts are facts. Stop believe in God. Give us a verification not fucking theory.
  1. Super Kami Dende's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Volitar View Post
    At this point I don't even understand the point of the PTR it seems like they don't even test anything. Patch goes live and we get a million hotfixes during week 1.
    Because without a PTR those Bugs/Hotfixes would be around 10 million. There is always unforeseeable things that happen and the sample sizes of Live vs ptr are immensely larger which allow them to target things they may have overlooked in PTR, i.e. certain item/Talent combinations.

    People that think or believe you can come out of a PTR perfect are delusional, since no MMO has ever managed to.
  1. Najja's Avatar
    They list all these trinkets but what about Nightblooming Frond? Pretty sure it falls into "trinkets which relied on a direct damage", is that one fine? I picked one up out of a Nightmare Cache and honestly it seems like it really sucks.
  1. lichbane's Avatar
    So with an 85% buff, I wonder if the Fobidden Grimoire is actually worth it now.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Beeftek View Post
    Really? Learn to read statistics or go to school, lol. You are embrassing. Facts are facts. Stop believe in God. Give us a verification not fucking theory.
    This toxic reply still doesn't change the fact that the last thing raids need is another melee. Survival is not an option.
  1. mmoc106b8537bb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by lichbane View Post
    So with an 85% buff, I wonder if the Fobidden Grimoire is actually worth it now.

    - - - Updated - - -



    This toxic reply still doesn't change the fact that the last thing raids need is another melee. Survival is not an option.
    That's not a fact, that's an opinion or believe. Most elephants are grey or 1+1= 2 is a fact. Or 5000+ parses tell.us frost is lowest is a fact. I don't care opinions or believings, I see you didn't understood my answer!
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