World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

As we prepare for the opening of Mythic Nighthold, we're planning another round of balance tuning for a few specs. These will be applied with the next weekly maintenance.

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)
    
    • Designer 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% (up from 50%).
  
  • Designer 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 (up from 5).
  • Multi-Shot now generates 3 Focus per target hit (up from 2).
  • Sidewinders damage increased by 33%.
    
    • Designer 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 5%. (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% (down from 70%).
  • Amplification now increases Arcane Missiles damage by 12% (down from 15%).
    
    • Designer Notes: Arcane has been doing well in 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 new talents that are proving to be too strong.
• Fire
  
  • Pyroblast mana cost reduced by 20%.
  • Flamestrike mana cost reduced by 17%.
    
    • Designer 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
  
  • Comet Storm damage increased by 24%.
  • Flurry now fires its missiles faster.
    
    • Designer 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%.
    
    • Designer 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 (down from 3.5%).
  • Blade of Justice damage increased by 20%, unchanged in PvP.
    
    • Designer 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 that 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%.
    
    • Designer 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.

As always, there may be additional PvP-only tuning applied along with these changes. We'll share details on any such changes once they've been determined.

We've been following the discussion on the recent changes to the Convergence of Fates trinkets for Retribution Paladins, as well as the surrounding discussions about trinket balance in general, and wanted to give a quick update on what we're planning:

The original value of Convergence for Ret was wildly out of line with other trinkets, largely due to its interaction with Crusade. After investigation, however, we believe that the change we made may have overshot the mark. We’ll be making some additional adjustments to Convergence of Fate, to make sure that it’s still a good trinket for Ret.

We’re also investigating Convergence’s value to other classes, particularly those with talents that replace the cooldowns that Convergence effects (such as Dark Arbiter for Unholy Death Knights). Like Crusade, those talents are made significantly more powerful when combined with Convergence of Fate, so we’ll likely need to make some adjustments when those kinds of talents are selected as well.

We are also planning to improve Nighthold trinkets which have effects that aren’t a stat buff, such as the slam on Might of Krosus. We will post more information about this as soon as we have settled on the appropriate values, and are planning to make the changes with raid resets next week.

We’ve been regularly reviewing the types of discussions on the World of Warcraft forums following the changes we made last year. This thread is a “heads-up” of sorts to let you know of some further changes we will be making. The full details are as follows:

• A new “Transmogrification” forum will be opened for all your budding fashionista needs!
• The “Dungeons & Raids” forum will be re-opened!
• The “PvE Discussions” forum will be renamed to “Quests & Achievements.”
• The “PvP Discussions” will be split into two new forums called “Arena” and “Battlegrounds.”
• The current “PvP Discussions” forum will be removed. If there are any posts that you wish to keep, please save them and re-post them in the appropriate new forum.

We will be making these changes on 24.01.2017 and the “PvP Discussions” forum will be removed on 30.01.2017.

Thank you!