Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes

[Osiris]

Patch 8.2 Rise of Azshara - Information Roundup from Content Creators

Rise of Azshara PTR - Initial Class Changes

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.

[lb]

RIP outlaw in M+ dungeons ... the only viable rogue ae-spec is therefore killed - ty blizzard

[Mewhywhy]

RIP outlaw in M+ dungeons ... the only viable rogue ae-spec is therefore killed - ty blizzard

Not killed, just a tad less effective and broken OP.

Rogues even with 0 dps will always be welcome in m+ due to their native allities.
Go cry somewhere else that you won't be broken OP anymore.

[Eazy]

RIP outlaw in M+ dungeons ... the only viable rogue ae-spec is therefore killed - ty blizzard

People were using 1 of that trait anyway lol.

[Season2mask]

Please nerf rogues and DH's to the ground. Or buff Warr dps. Either is fine.

[DrMcNinja]

RIP outlaw in M+ dungeons ... the only viable rogue ae-spec is therefore killed - ty blizzard

That trait was broken beyond belief. If you think that kills Outlaw you either never played Outlaw, or you suck.

[NatePsy]

Hoping to see Prot Warriors more in line with other tanks in terms of raw AoE damage potential. It was getting kinda ridiculous with how much damage they were putting out.

[Kumorii]

Sad to see no changes to mages, especially fire mages for m+

[Qck]

Initial Class Changes

The important part is bolded, these are basically just to quiet the MDI outrage that is going on right now. Of course they're not the only changes coming in 8.2, so don't worry that class X didn't get buffed or class Y didn't get nerfed. Expect Warlocks, SPriests and maybe Moonkin to eat some raid related nerfs as well which should bring everything closer together

Unfortunately, for the sake of fairness, they can't make too many changes mid tournament, so this is the best we get.

[Saiteck]

Where the F are the Mage buffs? A 3 dps spec class and all of them are mostly in the bottom tier right now

[Quixef]

Warrior damage nerf / resto druid cat form soothe nerf / outlaw rogue nerf are all intended to increase MAU metrics by making dungeons take longer. We are on to you Blizz. [/s]

[Syce]

Where the F are the Mage buffs? A 3 dps spec class and all of them are mostly in the bottom tier right now

this is the INITIAL class changes. im sure there will be plenty more, AND probably for all classes some way or another.

[Trumpcat]

this is the INITIAL class changes. im sure there will be plenty more, AND probably for all classes some way or another.

Yeah I want to believe that. But I thought the same thing for 8.0.5 and for 8.1 and for 8.1.5. Nothing happened. Small adjustments here and there, but the class imbalance is still enormous and specs are still dull to play.

We aren't just a step down from Legion, we are barely few steps up from Classic.

[redf]

Initial Class Changes

The important part is bolded, these are basically just to quiet the MDI outrage that is going on right now. Of course they're not the only changes coming in 8.2, so don't worry that class X didn't get buffed or class Y didn't get nerfed. Expect Warlocks, SPriests and maybe Moonkin to eat some raid related nerfs as well which should bring everything closer together

Unfortunately, for the sake of fairness, they can't make too many changes mid tournament, so this is the best we get.

closer together ? Shadow Priest and Aff/destro locks are Specs that should always be on top of the meters when an encounter allows for spread damage. which happens alot in BoD

on pure ST they get beaten by like 9-10 other specs

I think they are in a great Spot right now

[krl]

Initial Class Changes

The important part is bolded, these are basically just to quiet the MDI outrage that is going on right now. Of course they're not the only changes coming in 8.2, so don't worry that class X didn't get buffed or class Y didn't get nerfed. Expect Warlocks, SPriests and maybe Moonkin to eat some raid related nerfs as well which should bring everything closer together

Unfortunately, for the sake of fairness, they can't make too many changes mid tournament, so this is the best we get.

Specs dominating in their respective niches comes as no surprise. BoD having cleaving encounters means sp/locks/boomies dominate on the meters and I don't see it changing. Rogues, DH and DK obliterate M+ trash packs and that's by design.

[Laqweeta]

Initial Class Changes

The important part is bolded, these are basically just to quiet the MDI outrage that is going on right now. Of course they're not the only changes coming in 8.2, so don't worry that class X didn't get buffed or class Y didn't get nerfed. Expect Warlocks, SPriests and maybe Moonkin to eat some raid related nerfs as well which should bring everything closer together

Unfortunately, for the sake of fairness, they can't make too many changes mid tournament, so this is the best we get.

Really wish they’d say fuck the tournament.

I guess this does show they are listening (MAYBE)

[justandulas]

These veng dh changes wouldn’t be necessary had they not nerfed them so hard in bfa from legion

[HeiAggra]

WOW Prot warr damage nerfed, still fury or arms bottom rock for mythic +
GG Blizz

[Puremallace]

Fucking finally!! Thank you from Prot Paladin who watch Prot Warrior doing obscene amounts of damage. Too bad they ignored all feedback until their MDI got turned into a joke. People have been telling them Guardian Druid was LOLOLOL since Beta and they did nothing.

[Quaade]

Hoping to see Prot Warriors more in line with other tanks in terms of raw AoE damage potential. It was getting kinda ridiculous with how much damage they were putting out.

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.