Class Adjustments With December 5th Maintenance, ToS Violations in Antorus

[chaud]

Patch 7.3.5 - Artifact Weapon Ending, World Changes, Command Boards, New Racial Icons

Class Adjustments With December 5th Maintenance

Starting tomorrow, December 5, with maintenance in each region, we're planning the following class tuning:

Classes

• Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Shadow
    
    • Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain damage reduced by 12%.
    • All other abilities increased by 3%.
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Outlaw
    
    • All damage abilities increased by 4%.
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Affliction
    
    • Corruption and Agony damage reduced 6%
    • Unstable Affliction damage reduced 4%

Items

• Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Balance
    
    • Stormheart Raiment 4-piece – Starsurge and Starfall now increase your Haste by 2% (was 3%), stacking up to 4 times (was 5).
• Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Beast Mastery
    • Serpentstalker Guise 4-piece – Kill Command now reduces the cooldown of Aspect of the Wild by 2.5 seconds (was 1.5 seconds).
  • Marksmanship
    
    • Serpentstalker Guise 4-piece – Marked Shot now has a 50% chance (was 30%) to fire an extra Marked shot at up to 3 additional targets.
• Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Brewmaster
    
    • Chi-Ji’s Battle Gear 4-piece – Dodging an attack now reduces the remaining cooldown of Breath of Fire by 2.0 seconds (was 1.0 seconds).
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Assassination
    
    • Regalia of the Dashing Scoundrel 4-piece – Your Deadly or Wound Poison critical strike now generate 3 Energy (was 2 Energy).
  • Subtlety
    
    • Regalia of the Dashing Scoundrel 4-piece – Backstab and Shadowstrike now have a 4% chance (was 3%) to grant Shadow Gestures.
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Affliction
    
    • Diabolic Raiment 4-piece – Spending a Soul Shard now has a chance to grant you 10% Haste (was 15%).
    • Grim Inquisitor’s Regalia 4-piece – Unstable Affliction and Seed of Corruption now increase the damage targets take from your Agony and Corruption by 15% (was 10%).
  • Demonology
    
    • Grim Inquisitor’s Regalia 4-piece – Demonic Empowerment now causes your Dreadstalkers to immediately cast another Dreadbite with 75% increased damage (was 50%).
• Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)
  
  • Arms
    
    • Titanic Onslaught Armor 4-piece – The amount of bonus Mortal Strike damage events has been reduced to 2 during Bladestorm (was 3), and 1 during Ravager (was 2).

As always, we're keeping a very close eye on performance across all specs. Thank you very much for your feedback!

Terms of Service Violations in Antorus

As you’ve seen over the course of Legion, we’ve been consistently increasing our actions taken against Terms of Service violations used to give an unfair advantage in raid and dungeon content. These violations include selling raid clears for real money, sharing accounts between members of the same raid team, and similar behaviors prohibited under the ToS.

With Mythic Antorus about to open and the world first race ready to begin, we felt it was important to give a reminder of our stance on these issues, as well as a warning that we will be actively monitoring and taking action against those who participate in such behavior to gain an early progression advantage in Mythic Antorus.

We’re excited to see how our top players progress through Mythic Antorus in the weeks to come, and want to ensure that the experience is as fair as possible for everyone participating. Please keep this in mind as you begin to work your way through the Burning Throne, and best of luck!

[Aucald]

Pretty across the board buff for Outlaw spec.

[UnholyGrazer]

Pretty across the board buff for Outlaw spec.

You don't say....

[Aucald]

You don't say....

Pretty unusual for class/spec adjustment to just say "all damage abilities increased by X%."

[Varolyn]

Pretty across the board buff for Outlaw spec.

I don't see how much it is going to help outlaw though. This raid as a whole is pretty terrible for outlaw except for maybe eonar.

[Lulbalance]

From an affi point of view.. could be worse.. lol.

[Ophenia]

At least my Shadow Priest had one week of usefulness-y in MM+

Back to the trunk.

[ravity]

Lazy, but expected buff to Outlaw...

Applying the raw 4% buff naively to the current SimCraft numbers, it makes Outlaw (on average) the 3rd highest DPS melee spec (and ~7th highest DPS spec overall) at 960 ilvl w/ t21, well ahead of the other rogue specs, but still behind Sub (DfA) at 930 t20 (on average). But with the added bonus of being by far the most inconsistent spec in the game right now (at both item levels, but especially at lower item levels w/ t20)...

Given that huge inconsistency, and Sub's much higher playtime since Legion's launch, I'm interested to see what effect this actually has at all. It doesn't seem like it makes Outlaw all that more appealing (especially for progression)... But I'd expect to see high parses once content is on farm...

Obviously SimCraft numbers are not nearly a 100% reflection of actual in-game performance, just doing a incredibly quick and incredibly naive comparison to what's currently on live...

I often wonder... With changes like this... What the goal is? Seems rather purposeless, to be honest...

Will this actually affect the number of rogues raiding as Outlaw? I kind of doubt it.

[Fenderxx]

Lazy, but expected buff to Outlaw...

Applying the raw 4% buff naively to the current SimCraft numbers, it makes Outlaw (on average) the 3rd highest DPS melee spec (and ~7th highest DPS spec overall) at 960 ilvl w/ t21, well ahead of the other rogue specs, but still behind Sub (DfA) at 930 t20 (on average). But with the added bonus of being by far the most inconsistent spec in the game right now (at both item levels, but especially at lower item levels w/ t20)...

Given that huge inconsistency, and Sub's much higher playtime since Legion's launch, I'm interested to see what effect this actually has at all. It doesn't seem like it makes Outlaw all that more appealing (especially for progression)... But I'd expect to see high parses once content is on farm...

Obviously SimCraft numbers are not nearly a 100% reflection of actual in-game performance, just doing a incredibly quick and incredibly naive comparison to what's currently on live...

I often wonder... With changes like this... What the goal is? Seems rather purposeless, to be honest...

Will this actually affect the number of rogues raiding as Outlaw? I kind of doubt it.

Isn't that a good place for a buff to be? It brings up an under performing spec, but doesn't change the meta or make people feel forced to switch for the cutting edge? I agree the aura buffs are a bit lazy, but I think that is a good place for a buff to be... or I am I totally off my rocker (which is possible), but just genuinely curious.

[gcsmith]

Still waiting for that DH change promised in 7.1.5

[Mhyroth]

So about those Terms of Service Violations in Antorus.
Mind sharing why certain very high ranked Guilds still don't get punished or is the sole purpose so you can use them for Raid Testing on Live realms ?

[turlockmike]

Well, looks like they are trying to kill T20 4p for boomkins. I'm glad, but are they going to make up our single target?

[sam86]

since wow gold is literally equal to real life money, does that mean that blizzard is FINALLY stopping those 'boost sales' that fucked wow since the introduction of wow token ?

[Quixef]

I don't see how much it is going to help outlaw though. This raid as a whole is pretty terrible for outlaw except for maybe eonar.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that it will help the Outlaw by 4%.

[Biomega]

since wow gold is literally equal to real life money, does that mean that blizzard is FINALLY stopping those 'boost sales' that fucked wow since the introduction of wow token ?

It's not, though. You can trade money for gold via tokens, but you CANNOT trade gold for money - at best, you can trade it for Blizzard account balance, which is different from money in that you can't spend it on whatever you want. And that's a very, very crucial difference.

[Deleted]

And BM hunters?! sure the tier buff is nice but still, im weeks away from a 4 piece...

[VyersReaver]

Yeah, of course lets nerf T20 instead of buffing T21. Crying in Arms

[Deleted]

Tomb of Sargeras Violations in Antorus? I'm confused.

[Ehrenpanzer]

So about those Terms of Service Violations in Antorus.
Mind sharing why certain very high ranked Guilds still don't get punished or is the sole purpose so you can use them for Raid Testing on Live realms ?

Well who else is going to test their shit for them? What... you thought they were going to have a team to test their own shit?

[ravity]

Isn't that a good place for a buff to be? It brings up an under performing spec, but doesn't change the meta or make people feel forced to switch for the cutting edge? I agree the aura buffs are a bit lazy, but I think that is a good place for a buff to be... or I am I totally off my rocker (which is possible), but just genuinely curious.

I honestly don't know.

The competitive, numbers-obsessed player in me thinks that Blizzard should be making changes with the knowledge that a lot of players care a lot about how well they perform in a competitive raid environment, even if they are not at the cutting edge. And those that don't care aren't going to care whether they buff Outlaw 4% or not (they were probably already playing Outlaw anyway)...

So, if you have two camps (which I honestly think is a relatively realistic abstraction), one that cares about performing as well as their class can and one that plays the spec they enjoy (or find playable/easy to play), this change doesn't really affect either group. So, I guess the question just becomes does 4% make a raid that has a few Outlaw rogues in it capable of clearing content they were unable to before... I think the answer to that question is also no... Outlaw wasn't the worse spec (in fact it was the best scaling rogue spec to being with)... So, why are Ret Pallys or Feral Druids or DKs not getting buffs for the same reason? To make raids that bring a few better equipped to actually clear content?

I just don't understand how Blizzard makes these decisions. It just seems pointless...