Patch 8.2 Class Tuning Incoming – Tuesday, August 13

[Stoy]

Blizzard Announces Classic Server Names and Types

Patch 8.2 Class Tuning Incoming – Tuesday, August 13

We’re working on the following changes to several specs, which will go live with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region.

Please note that these adjustments are in testing, and we may add, edit, or strike them between now and maintenance. As always, we’ll let you know here if we make changes to the changes, and we’ll post the final numbers in our hotfixes update immediately after maintenance.

Classes

• Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Frost
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
  • Unholy
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Destruction
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Arms
    
    • Damage of all abilities increased by 5%.
• Developers’ notes: Arms Warrior, Destruction Warlock, Frost Death Knight and Unholy Death Knight are generally underperforming and could use a damage increase.
• Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Outlaw
    
    • Blade Flurry now strikes nearby enemies for 30% of normal damage (was 45%).
    • Keep Your Wits About You (Azerite Trait) now increases the chance for Sinister Strike to strike again by 3% (was 5%), and the maximum number of stacks has been increased to 33.
  • Developers’ notes: While multi-target cleave is an iconic strength for Outlaw Rogue, we feel that Blade Flurry is currently too strong, particularly in Mythic Keystone dungeons. Likewise, the Azerite Trait Keep Your Wits About You provides too much added value to their AOE rotation at only a single instance of the trait. These changes should keep Outlaw Rogues very strong at multi-target cleave, but no longer significantly ahead of other specs.
• Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Restoration
    
    • Healing Surge and Healing Wave healing increased by 10%, and mana cost reduced by 5%.
    • Healing Rain healing increased by 20%
    • Riptide heal-over-time increased by 15%.
    • Wellspring healing increased by 15%.
  • Developers’ notes: In general, Restoration Shamans are struggling with single target healing environments like Mythic Keystone Dungeons and Arenas, so we’re buffing some spells from their single target kit. At the same time, we also feel like they aren’t doing as well in a particular area where they should excel: healing a large number of targets in a small area, so we’re increasing the strength of Healing Rain. Finally, Wellspring is an underperforming talent we feel could benefit from an increase to be competitive.

Player versus Player

• Heart of Azeroth
  
  • All Tier 3 Azerite Traits (such as Resounding Protection and Impassive Visage) are now reduced to 20% effectiveness in PvP (was 50%).
    
    • Developers’ notes: We’d like to see sustained damage become a greater source of pressure in Arena and Battlegrounds, but the passive healing providing by these Azerite Traits offsets much of that damage. We think that by decreasing their impact, we’ll see greater pressure on health and mana pools going forward.
• Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Necrotic Strike’s Necrotic Wound now absorbs 5% of the target’s maximum health in healing received (was 7%).
  • The melee attack damage and attack speed of the Raise Abomination guardian has been decreased by 30%.
    
    • Developers’ notes: While Death Knight damage is underperforming in raid environments, they are very strong in PvP. To offset the increases to their base damage, we’re reducing the effectiveness of two very strong Honor Talents.
• Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
  
  • Temporal Shield now has a 4 second duration (was 6 seconds).
    
    • Developers’ notes: While we like the predictive gameplay of Temporal Shield in response to offensive pressure, we think the duration provides too much protection for a class that should be focused on control and mobility for defense.

[Frolk]

"Developers’ notes: Arms Warrior, Destruction Warlock, Frost Death Knight and Unholy Death Knight are generally underperforming and could use a damage increase."
Im sure 5% increase is gonna fix it.

[Gaidax]

"Developers’ notes: Arms Warrior, Destruction Warlock, Frost Death Knight and Unholy Death Knight are generally underperforming and could use a damage increase."
Im sure 5% increase is gonna fix it.

In case of Destruction - easily.

[Puri]

Funny that they nerf rogues during the MDI, should have done it with 8.2 already. Lets see if the teams can adapt quickly enough.

[Appelgren]

Wait... what? Buffs to uhdk and destruction locks?


Wow....

[OokOok]

About time, anyone who says outlaw isn't OP is delusional. It's pretty silly when groups are only inviting rogues cause they have good St, amazing aoe and amazIng utility compared to everyone else. They needed this nerf bad, 30% isn't enough imo. I have a 410 outlaw rogue with 1 green crucible essence and crap gear and I'm top in M10 by afking watching netflix and pressing BF on mob packs, it's redic.
This change should be added in now though, not later.

[Toby451]

Still nothing for Glimmerdins??? Holy shit man, if any DPS spec was ever this overtuned, the entire wow forums would crash from rage until it was fixed. Absolutely insane.

[agentsi]

In case of Destruction - easily.

I hope so? But it seems unlikely. My AFF sims almost 40k with pretty decent traits, Destro with better traits is simming at 34k. I don't think the 5% will do much in the way of balance. It will take more than a 5% flat buff. Just my 2 cents

[Foolicious]

Still nothing for Glimmerdins??? Holy shit man, if any DPS spec was ever this overtuned, the entire wow forums would crash from rage until it was fixed. Absolutely insane.

Glimmer is here to stay. But resto is getting buffed. Sure we'll see something else soon >.>

Philosophically, when we add customizable systems and bonuses to the game, some player-discovered experience is exactly the sort of thing we're hoping will happen. Even when we didn't anticipate all the details of an optimized build—arguably especially when we didn't anticipate all the details—it produces a chance for players to explore something cool and rewarding. Almost by definition, those situations are at least slightly imbalanced or slightly broken, which is acceptable as long as they're not too imbalanced or too broken.
There's a balance where cutting off the exploration too early ruins the fun of discovering it, but letting it go on too long gets to a point where players are less excited by the novelty of the new build and more bothered by imbalances or rotational problems. We want to keep an eye on that, but the preliminary look for 8.2 is that this is still a lively setup that people are excited to play. Any change would likely be a small tweak that's not intended to change its status as a popular or recommended playstyle.

[Sanguinerd]

Wow another 5% to arms like that is going to fix what is simply a trainwreck of a spec right now..

What should be a slow hard-hitting bad-ass, is instead some punk bitch who uses a wet noodle that applies a god damn dot.

[Exkrementor]

Developers’ notes: ... Destruction Warlock ... are generally underperforming and could use a damage increase.

Typical Blizzard move. Instead of nerfing the op warlock specs just buff the balanced ones. Warlock tuning since 2005.

Developers’ notes: In general, Restoration Shamans are struggling with single target healing environments. At the same time, we also feel like they aren’t doing as well in a particular area where they should excel: healing a large number of targets in a small area.

So what you are saying is that restoration shaman just suck everywhere, ok. Way too many words guys.

[TigTone]

Wow another 5% to arms like that is going to fix what is simply a trainwreck of a spec right now..

What should be a slow hard-hitting bad-ass, is instead some punk bitch who uses a wet noodle that applies a god damn dot.

It pales to its legion days.

[gr4vitas]

Lmao guess enhance is just deleted for this expansion.

[LuminaL]

Unholy DKs have ZERO burst in PvP and arena to fight off the fuckton of healing from healers who never run out of mana and what do they do? nerf the only fucking thing that kept Uh Dks slightly playable. rogues will melt you in matter of seconds and just run away/stealth when you pop a cd or they get even slightly low on HP and they nerf fucking UH DK?

[loanel]

You'd think that they could just improve the way Death Knight abilities scale from stats, but apparently blizzard is keen on giving us % damage increases every patch for the last 3 expansions.

[Julmara]

all while warrior tank still dominating the aoe meters

[Mirabai]

at 2200+ in 2v2 its like 90% DK + Heal.... Lets buff DK - sound like a good plan.

[PelinalWhitestrake]

If pvp in this game was a joke, this one turned it into a Bad comedy.

[Actaeix]

Lmao guess enhance is just deleted for this expansion.

Enhances already does good damage, they don't need 5% damage buffs.

Enhances actual problems are only going to be fixed with a spec rework and that isn't going to happen in some minor tuning pass if you were holding out for it.

[Nzx]

Enhances already does good damage, they don't need 5% damage buffs.

Enhances actual problems are only going to be fixed with a spec rework and that isn't going to happen in some minor tuning pass if you were holding out for it.

After these buffs, it will be dead last DPS spec in the game, along with having a terrible gameplay loop AND a huge reliance on RNG. Seems good.