Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes

Patch 8.2 Rise of Azshara - Information Roundup from Content Creators

Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes
We’ve been working on a suite of targeted changes that focus on improving gameplay for several specs. You’re going to see changes that are close to the following in the first build of the Rise of Azshara PTR (coming next week).

Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Vengeance
    • Demonic Wards: damage reduction increased to 15% (was 10%).
    • Demonic Wards: armor bonus increased to 100% (was 80%).
    • Demon Spikes: armor reduced to 60% of Agility (was 85%).
      • Developers’ notes: More than other tanks, Vengeance is currently dealing with the problem of low mitigation when their active mitigation is down. These changes are a substantial increase to physical mitigation when Demon Spikes is down, and a neutral-to-very-slight increase when Demon Spikes is active. There is also some overall passive reduction to magic damage. Overall, Vengeance’s sustained damage taken will be lower, and the periods of vulnerability outside of Demon Spikes should be less dramatic.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth are no longer castable in Cat or Bear form by default.
  • Feral Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 22 that allows Remove Corruption and Soothe to be cast in Cat Form.
  • Guardian Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 10 that allows Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth to be cast in Bear Form.
    • Developers’ notes: Guardian Druid is limited in its practical ability to use some utility abilities while tanking, and we’re loosening that restriction by allowing Remove Corruption in Bear Form. We’re also cleaning up Druid shapeshifting rules slightly: the use of magical-themed spells, in Feral forms, is allowed by passive upgrades given to Guardian and Feral specializations specifically. This represents their special mastery of their “home” form that allows for limited spellcasting, and from a gameplay perspective, this allows Feral/Guardian Druids to use spells in form where there is a strong practical need. At the same time, there are situations where there is no fantasy justification or gameplay need, and spellcasting might be more restricted. For example, non-Guardian Druids can no longer cast Moonfire in Bear Form.
  • Guardian
    • Ironfur and Maul now cost 40 Rage (was 45).
    • Mangle now generates 10 Rage (was 8).
      • Developers’ notes: Ironfur is intended to be maintainable with high uptime, up to 100%, and have some overlaps on top of that. Currently, depending on talent configuration, Druids may only be able to barely maintain full uptime on Ironfur. Making Ironfurs much more available should allow better control over timing and overlaps, as well as improving Guardian mitigation overall.
    • Shifting to Bear Form now gives 25 Rage (was 20).
      • Developer’s notes: It should now be much easier to get the first Ironfur activated promptly after engaging an enemy, due to the increased starting Rage and lower cost.
    • Mangle and Thrash direct damage increased by 15%.

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Beast Mastery
    • Barbed Shot damage is now affected by Bestial Wrath.
    • Barbed Shot damage reduced by 10%.
      • Developers’ notes: We are fixing a bug that caused Bestial Wrath to not affect Barbed Shot damage, and lowering the base damage of Barbed Shot to keep overall damage roughly unchanged.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Outlaw
    • Keep Your Wits About You (Azerite Trait) now stacks once per instance of Blade Flurry dealing damage (was once for every target Blade Flurry hits). Each stack now provides 5% Sinister Strike chance (was 2%).
      • Developers’ notes: In very large packs of enemies, especially in dungeons, Keep Your Wits About You provides much more damage than one copy of one Azerite Trait was intended to provide. With this change, you’ll still feel this trait accelerate as you build stacks, but the size of the group that you’re fighting won’t affect how much damage the trait is giving you. This will be a damage increase against two targets, and a damage reduction against 3 or more targets.

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  • Protection
    • Unstoppable Force Thunderclap damage reduced to 50% (was 100%).
      • Developers’ notes: Protection Warrior burst DPS with Avatar is extremely high for a tank. This talent was adding more damage than necessary, given that it also decreases Thunder Clap’s cooldown and synergizes well with certain Azerite traits.

We’ll update this post as necessary, especially as we develop PvP-specific tuning adjustments over the first few weeks of the PTR.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes started by Osiris View original post
Published on 2019-04-13 09:05 AM
73 Comments
Comments 73 Comments
  1. captaincoffeecup's Avatar
    Prot Warrior is currently ridiculous for AoE damage. My 355 newly levelled Warrior does 24k on some packs in dungeons, where as my 408 Brewmaster does about 21k. This is a necessary change but it doesn't break the spec so I'm fine with it. Warrior is in a good place right now but it's damage is just stupid high and definitely needs a nerf to AoE.

    To the poster who said Rogues and Demon Hunters got buffed, that's just wrong. It's a nerf to one Rogue spec that will probably be negligible, but certainly not a buff outside of 2 target cleave (which is pretty rare in m+). As for Demon Hunters, this is for Vengeance, not Havoc. Vengeance is an insanely weak tank right now, far worse than anything else. They have one button mitigation that is OK with Demon Spikes, but outside of that, DH tanks are really, really bad for damage mitigation. It wouldn't be so bad if that just affected m+ where you can kite a lot, but in raids the spec is just unplayable right now. This buff to the tank spec is very welcome and completely necessary. I would say it isn't enough in fact.
  1. Leih's Avatar
    MDI players: Protection warriors are total garbo in dungeons... but they do really high damage, and that's the most important thing for us, so we'll take prot warriors in spite of their dogshit utility and shit mitigation just for the OP damage

    Blizzard: We hear you fam. Prot warrior damage nerfed. Now you won't feel forced to bring a useless shitty Prot Warrior when you can bring an actual good tank!

    Prot Warriors: .....

    Thanks Blizz.
  1. La's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Saiteck View Post
    Where the F are the Mage buffs? A 3 dps spec class and all of them are mostly in the bottom tier right now
    These changes are all directed at M+, as a result of them going "Ooops. MDI oversights"

    Don't hold your breath lol. I absolutely love all these meta/fotm players whining, though.
  1. Rylalai's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leih View Post
    MDI players: Protection warriors are total garbo in dungeons... but they do really high damage, and that's the most important thing for us, so we'll take prot warriors in spite of their dogshit utility and shit mitigation just for the OP damage

    Blizzard: We hear you fam. Prot warrior damage nerfed. Now you won't feel forced to bring a useless shitty Prot Warrior when you can bring an actual good tank!

    Prot Warriors: .....

    Thanks Blizz.
    Prot is garbage without thunderclap dmg and its mitigation sucks? Please, tell me more.
  1. JoshuaNLG's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leih View Post
    MDI players: Protection warriors are total garbo in dungeons... but they do really high damage, and that's the most important thing for us, so we'll take prot warriors in spite of their dogshit utility and shit mitigation just for the OP damage

    Blizzard: We hear you fam. Prot warrior damage nerfed. Now you won't feel forced to bring a useless shitty Prot Warrior when you can bring an actual good tank!

    Prot Warriors: .....

    Thanks Blizz.
    Not true in the slightest lol.
  1. Kaver's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leih View Post
    MDI players: Protection warriors are total garbo in dungeons... but they do really high damage, and that's the most important thing for us, so we'll take prot warriors in spite of their dogshit utility and shit mitigation just for the OP damage

    Blizzard: We hear you fam. Prot warrior damage nerfed. Now you won't feel forced to bring a useless shitty Prot Warrior when you can bring an actual good tank!

    Prot Warriors: .....

    Thanks Blizz.
    Nevertheless prot warriors did too much damage. Nerf is justified.
  1. Justpassing's Avatar
    Well we all know Avatar nerf was a-comin', it was fun while it lasted.
  1. Ealyssa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leih View Post
    shit mitigation
    At least we know you're totally clueless about tanking and talking with your ass.

    Thanks for sparing us the time of a pointless discussion.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Don't know what's so wrong about letting tanks do dmg... just buff all the tanks up to warrior level.
  1. Ankalima's Avatar
    I think Blizzard class team hates Mages especially Fire Mages.
  1. DeferentUrchin's Avatar
    Prot's going to need a couple small defensive buffs to help compensate for the damage loss if this goes through, because we'll now be neck-in-neck with Prot Paladins for aoe/cleave, and they have % mitigation and vastly better anti-magic defensives than us.
  1. DeferentUrchin's Avatar
    Prot Warriors are going to need a couple of small defensive buffs to compensate for this nerf to our damage output, as this puts us roughly in line with Prot Paladins. Which is FINE, but they have % reduction mitigation (on top of blocking like us), including far superior magic mitigation...
  1. Leih's Avatar
    Hyperbolic satire sure gets people riled up around here


    Quote Originally Posted by Rylalai View Post
    Prot is garbage without thunderclap dmg and its mitigation sucks? Please, tell me more.
    Prot is pretty meh in M+ when you remove the high damage factor.

    They were meh at the start of the expansion and now they'll be meh again. Not unviable, just meh.

    Prot desperately needs some utility brought back. If prot warrior doing high damage isn't a factor, why bring a prot warrior over other tanks with ranged silences, better group utility, death grips, knockbacks and all the rest?

    There's a stun and a weak fear and that's about it. Used to be you could point to the mobility at least, but others do that better now too.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaver View Post
    Nevertheless prot warriors did too much damage. Nerf is justified.
    Agreed. Absolutely needed the damage nerf. Just a bit sad to see Rogue and other class adjustments were "Ok we wanna nerf the OP part without totally damaging other parts" but Prot warrior note is simply "Yeah. Straight nerf. Sorry!"

    Quote Originally Posted by Ealyssa View Post
    At least we know you're totally clueless about tanking and talking with your ass.

    Thanks for sparing us the time of a pointless discussion.
    Oof the salt is real <3

    Did a prot warrior piss in your coffee?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Don't know what's so wrong about letting tanks do dmg... just buff all the tanks up to warrior level.
    Probably a bit extreme, as Prot was out damaging many other actual DPS in equal gear, on the AOE at least. I think there's room for tanks to do damage without making them better than half the actual DPS specs at it.
  1. Beefkow's Avatar
    We will still take unstoppable force no matter how many times they nerf it.

    It's the other 2 talents that are absolute garbage.
  1. Kaver's Avatar
    There will probably also be some nerfs to unholy dk AOE. However, they should definitely get a ST buff to compensate.
  1. DeferentUrchin's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leih View Post
    Hyperbolic satire sure gets people riled up around here




    Prot is pretty meh in M+ when you remove the high damage factor.

    They were meh at the start of the expansion and now they'll be meh again. Not unviable, just meh.

    Prot desperately needs some utility brought back. If prot warrior doing high damage isn't a factor, why bring a prot warrior over other tanks with ranged silences, better group utility, death grips, knockbacks and all the rest?

    There's a stun and a weak fear and that's about it. Used to be you could point to the mobility at least, but others do that better now too.



    Agreed. Absolutely needed the damage nerf. Just a bit sad to see Rogue and other class adjustments were "Ok we wanna nerf the OP part without totally damaging other parts" but Prot warrior note is simply "Yeah. Straight nerf. Sorry!"



    Oof the salt is real <3

    Did a prot warrior piss in your coffee?

    - - - Updated - - -



    Probably a bit extreme, as Prot was out damaging many other actual DPS in equal gear, on the AOE at least. I think there's room for tanks to do damage without making them better than half the actual DPS specs at it.

    I think the damage nerf is 100% fair provided we get a couple of small defensive/utility buffs to compensate. Spell Reflect needs to be made to last longer (like 8-10 seconds), and not just have itself consumed IMMEDIATELY when a deflectable spell comes our way. Ignore Pain, especially when you are being bombarded and are barely scrapping up the Rage to cast it is WOEFULLY inadequate mitigation to handle heavy magic damage intake, especially in raids (Jadefire Master fire birdo will rip your asshole apart).

    Ever since they nerfed the absorb cap on it, it's hardly the case that you are ever able to put up an absord shield worth a shit. Not to mention our damage will now put us in league with high-performing Prot Pallies (they will overtake us on cleave fights now I'm sure), except they have the same block capacity we do ON TOP of % mitigation that also works on magic and vastly dwarfs ours.
  1. Laylriana's Avatar
    " Beast Mastery
    Barbed Shot damage is now affected by Bestial Wrath.
    Barbed Shot damage reduced by 10%.
    Developers’ notes: We are fixing a bug that caused Bestial Wrath to not affect Barbed Shot damage, and lowering the base damage of Barbed Shot to keep overall damage roughly unchanged."

    In other words - we nerfed Barbed Shot to underperform for 75 seconds of the 90 second cooldown to compensate for the 15 seconds of enhanced performance.
  1. ShaanuJaanu's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Quaade View Post
    Yes, lower their damage, give them nothing else and remove the only thing that sets them apart from other tanks.

    Please make the inferior versions of every other tank spec out there again. A truly brilliant move by the dev team that once again proves it has no clue how the game work.

    As Ion said before Necrotic was changed to physical damage: "Take Necrotic, for example, its presence makes a Prot Warrior better and a Blood DK worse." Yes, that was truly stupid and completely out of touch and removed from how the game actually worked.
    LOL? nothing else? Prot warrior has no weaknesses in M+.
  1. Jastall's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Beefkow View Post
    We will still take unstoppable force no matter how many times they nerf it.

    It's the other 2 talents that are absolute garbage.
    I don't think the point is to make us take the other talents, but more to ensure that Thunder Clap alone doesn't do more damage than every single tank in the game is capable of outputting with their entire toolkit. As a Warrior main, there's no reason our tank spec should be competing with most DPS specs on damage in M+.

    As for the other changes, Rogues will still be M+ kings even if they outright removed that trait, and Vengeance might need even more than the current buffs, the spec just isn't great at all.
  1. Mardux's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Melvoin View Post
    And where are the warlock changes OMFG? And they buff rogues and demon hunters again? WTF?0.
    Vengeance was pretty trash (compared to most other tanks) in m+ at key levels that matter. They have been for a while. They didn't buff demon hunters, they buffed vengeance spec (havoc is unchanged as of yet).

    And if you read the notes, it was a straight up nerf (and a pretty big one) to outlaw rogues in aoe situations, and an almost unnoticeable buff to their st and 2t cleave. Overall, outlaw got nerfed in m+, which is what these changes were aimed at.

    But i suppose if your warlock isn't brokenly overpowered anymore, it needs to be buffed before any other changes are made.
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