Patch 8.1.5 Hotfixes - Week of April 23, Upcoming Patch 8.2 PTR Class Changes

[chaud]

Patch 8.1.5 Hotfixes - Week of April 23

The changes below will be going live this week.

Classes
DoT specs are often in the "normal" damage range for single-target fights and can be significantly above "normal" for multi-target fights. Please note that the goal here isn’t to just counter-tune specs in each bit of new content as we believe specs that work well in an encounter should continue to do so.

Regarding this specific Shadow Priest change, their multi-target performance was beyond our tuning targets and so we simply want to bring them back into range while minimizing the impact to their single-target performance.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

• Shadow
• Auspicious Spirits damage reduced to 70% (was 100%).

Developers’ notes: The damage reduction to this talent is meant to curb the synergy of Insanity and Shadowy Apparition generation when combined with some Azerite traits, while still leaving it as a fun and interesting combo.

Player versus Player

• Abyssal Speaker's Gauntlets shield absorption effect is reduced by 66% when engaged in combat with enemy players.
• Trident of Deep Ocean shield absorption effect is reduced by 50% when engaged in combat with enemy players.

Upcoming Patch 8.2 PTR Class Changes

We have a few more class changes coming to the Rise of Azshara PTR. We made the initial changes and the following will be active on the PTR soon.

Demon Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

Vengeance

• Metamorphosis
  
  • Health bonus 50% (from 30%)
  • Now causes Shear to generate 20 additional Pain and 1 additional Lesser Soul Fragment (was: generates 7 Pain per second).
    
    • Developers’ Note: This significantly increases the self-healing potential of Metamorphosis, as well as the health buffer, making it a more reliable major cooldown against all types of damage.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

Guardian

• Frenzied Regeneration (Rank 3) is learned at level 85:
  
  • Frenzied Regeneration spends up to 30 additional Rage to immediately heal you for up to 18% additional health.
    
    • Note: This spell is affected by Guardian of Elune, but not affected by mastery.

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

Frost

• Runic Empowerment has a 2.0% chance to proc per Runic Power spent (from 1.5%)
• Frost Fever’s chance to generate Runic Power increased to 30%
  
  • Chance now diminishes on targets beyond the first
• Breath of Sindragosa now has double the usual chance to proc Runic Empowerment
• Breath of Sindragosa costs 18 Runic Power/sec (from 15)
  
  • Developers’ Note: Frost was starved of resources too often, especially when using Breath of Sindragosa. This increases Frosts’s Rune income baseline and includes a further change that returns many extra Runes while using Breath of Sindragosa. Breath builds will now be able to fill more global cooldowns with casts of Obliterate, to make up for the lost Frost Strikes. The cost of Breath itself is increased to keep its overall duration roughly unchanged.

[SinR]

Time to pull out that NERF DARTBOARD AGAIN!

*throws dart*

NERF SHADOWPRIESTS!

[Beefkow]

Yikes.

Why are they buffing BOS, the only viable talent.

The other 2 are absolute garbage.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Elemental Shaman is definitely next.

[Incandio]

Time to pull out that NERF DARTBOARD AGAIN!

*throws dart*

NERF SHADOWPRIESTS!

It is quite funny. But it does sort of perpetuate the strange myth that this is how developers work.

[Relapses]

Well, that was to be expected. But honestly this is probably the longest period of time they've allowed Shadow to be OP.

[Philomene]

Spriest nerf because dealing too much in multitarget yet let teams triple stack outlaw in m+

lolzz

[morph4037]

Elemental Shaman is definitely next.

Yarp.

/10 char

[ornichi]

I hope they consider buffing subtlety rogues for 8.2

[mrinvisable2]

It is quite funny. But it does sort of perpetuate the strange myth that this is how developers work.

i think dart missed 5 mm from ele shaman picture on board.

[Kaver]

Spriest nerf because dealing too much in multitarget yet let teams triple stack outlaw in m+

lolzz

One problem doesn’t justify another. Don’t mix the things.

[Ridcully]

Guardian change is just weird. Do they want us to take more damage after we use a heal? Nobody ever asked for this, just take FR off the fucking gcd...
If FR consumes full 30 extra rage, you will take ~35% more physical damage for next 5,25 seconds compared to situation when it consumed 0 rage.

[Greengrim]

Dear god, not only do Blizzard NOT want to fix Frost DK, but they are even mocking us with these retarded changes.........the problem with Frost IS the Breath of Sindragosa!! It's an utterly idiotic talent which limits your gameplay to burst windows only. First of all this style is boring as fuck, as well as unrewarding. People need more action, not a 15sec window in which they do damage, then poke their noses for 2 minutes. We need to press more buttons, and I mean different buttons, not the same ones but more times. Give us our short gcd back. Remove pillar and horn from gcd. Let us choose from a few viable styles.

[Th3Scourge]

At this point they might as well make Breath of Sindragosa a baseline ability considering Blizzard seem to want Frost DK to only spec into it.

[vilememory]

For the longest time I thought Blizzard had forgotten about us DK's. And now, I wish they had. I hate Breath so much... so very much...

[kamuimac]

lol rip poor shadow priests

i wouldnt be surprised if this was nerfs akin to demonology warlock nerfs from WoD with blizzard" not wanting people to play shadow" beause of incoming void oriented class in 9.0

[Philomene]

One problem doesn’t justify another. Don’t mix the things.

How is SP not being meta for m+ neither for CoS a problem that had to be addressed by a nerf through a hotfix?

[Muh]

How is SP not being meta for m+ neither for CoS a problem that had to be addressed by a nerf through a hotfix?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...273&dataset=90
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...269&dataset=90

This looks like meta in CoS for me

[Kaver]

How is SP not being meta for m+ neither for CoS a problem that had to be addressed by a nerf through a hotfix?

As Blizzard already said, SP is/was overtuned for multi-dotting raid fights. Outlaw rogue has nothing to do with that. End of story.

[Ishayu]

Guardian change is just weird. Do they want us to take more damage after we use a heal? Nobody ever asked for this, just take FR off the fucking gcd...
If FR consumes full 30 extra rage, you will take ~35% more physical damage for next 5,25 seconds compared to situation when it consumed 0 rage.

I don't understand this change, either. I don't think it should be off the GCD, it just shouldn't be... whatever this is.