March 12 Class Hotfixes
Look for more information on the ToT RPPM trinkets soon!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Lead Systems Designer Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) wanted to give notice of several class hotfixes that went live last night along with the reasoning behind those changes.
Hotfixes:
We’re happy with the relative power of Arcane, Fire and Frost mages in PvE to each other, but all three specs are below where we want them. We were hoping that once groups got past the first few 5.2 raid encounters that benefit a lot from multi-dotting that we’d see mage DPS climb, but it’s not there yet. We don’t want to change rotations or force players to change specs, so we wanted a relatively passive change.
We decided to buff the bombs because it affects all three specs relatively similarly and is as close to a passive form of damage as mages have. Had we buffed the cast-time nukes, the risk is that mages would lose even more DPS on high movement or high multi-dot fights, which wasn’t our intent. If these buffs aren’t sufficient, we will happily make more, but we’d rather make a few buffs a few times in a row rather than over buff then have to nerf it back down.
We want the dot specs to do well in multi-dot scenarios, but Affliction, Demonology and Shadow were doing too well on multi-dot fights and are still quite competitive on non-multi-dot fights. Balance druids, so far, are where we want them to be.
We’re keeping a close eye on death knights. Frost and Unholy are both performing really well, but Frost was higher than we wanted during cleave-type scenarios. They will still be quite good at cleaving even with this change.
Tank DPS is a difficult metric to measure because some tanks care a lot about their DPS, and work to maximize it, while others are content to fill the more traditional tank role of worrying about survivability and boss control, and pay less attention to their DPS. Therefore, it’s challenging to analyze logs and determine whether you’re seeing the full potential of tank DPS or not. For now, we think warrior and DK tank DPS was a little low, so we took steps to adjust it.
Remember, it’s not a goal that every spec do exactly equally well in every possible encounter, and in fact we think that would be boring. We just don’t want things to get so extreme that certain specs feel like they aren’t meaningfully contributing to the group’s efforts. All of this means that raid performance is a somewhat subjective call and we’d like to ask that you keep that in mind as you offer your feedback.
Throne of Thunder LFR Opens Today
The first three bosses of Throne of Thunder become available on Raid Finder difficulty today! You can find their encounter journal and loot tables on the pages linked below, and boss guides over at Icy Veins.
It is worth noting that the bridge trash isn't as bad as it is in normal difficulty and the difficulty is significantly lower than it was on the PTR during earlier testing.
Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Blood Legion has defeated the first two bosses in Heroic 25 man difficulty and Gag Reflex has the first boss down in Heroic 10 man difficulty. You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.
More...
Look for more information on the ToT RPPM trinkets soon!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Lead Systems Designer Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) wanted to give notice of several class hotfixes that went live last night along with the reasoning behind those changes.
Hotfixes:
- Mage: Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, Frost Bomb damage +40%.
We’re happy with the relative power of Arcane, Fire and Frost mages in PvE to each other, but all three specs are below where we want them. We were hoping that once groups got past the first few 5.2 raid encounters that benefit a lot from multi-dotting that we’d see mage DPS climb, but it’s not there yet. We don’t want to change rotations or force players to change specs, so we wanted a relatively passive change.
We decided to buff the bombs because it affects all three specs relatively similarly and is as close to a passive form of damage as mages have. Had we buffed the cast-time nukes, the risk is that mages would lose even more DPS on high movement or high multi-dot fights, which wasn’t our intent. If these buffs aren’t sufficient, we will happily make more, but we’d rather make a few buffs a few times in a row rather than over buff then have to nerf it back down.
- Warlock: Corruption damage -25%.
- Warlock: Doom damage -25%.
- Priest: Shadow Word: Pain damage -25%.
We want the dot specs to do well in multi-dot scenarios, but Affliction, Demonology and Shadow were doing too well on multi-dot fights and are still quite competitive on non-multi-dot fights. Balance druids, so far, are where we want them to be.
- Death Knight: Howling Blast secondary target damage to 50% of primary target (down from 65%)
- Death Knight: Rune Strike damage +25%.
- Warrior: Shield Slam damage +25%.
- Warrior: Deep Wounds damage for Protection only, +50%.
We’re keeping a close eye on death knights. Frost and Unholy are both performing really well, but Frost was higher than we wanted during cleave-type scenarios. They will still be quite good at cleaving even with this change.
Tank DPS is a difficult metric to measure because some tanks care a lot about their DPS, and work to maximize it, while others are content to fill the more traditional tank role of worrying about survivability and boss control, and pay less attention to their DPS. Therefore, it’s challenging to analyze logs and determine whether you’re seeing the full potential of tank DPS or not. For now, we think warrior and DK tank DPS was a little low, so we took steps to adjust it.
Remember, it’s not a goal that every spec do exactly equally well in every possible encounter, and in fact we think that would be boring. We just don’t want things to get so extreme that certain specs feel like they aren’t meaningfully contributing to the group’s efforts. All of this means that raid performance is a somewhat subjective call and we’d like to ask that you keep that in mind as you offer your feedback.
Throne of Thunder LFR Opens Today
The first three bosses of Throne of Thunder become available on Raid Finder difficulty today! You can find their encounter journal and loot tables on the pages linked below, and boss guides over at Icy Veins.
It is worth noting that the bridge trash isn't as bad as it is in normal difficulty and the difficulty is significantly lower than it was on the PTR during earlier testing.
Throne of Thunder Heroic Progression
Blood Legion has defeated the first two bosses in Heroic 25 man difficulty and Gag Reflex has the first boss down in Heroic 10 man difficulty. You can keep up with the kills on Manaflask, our forum thread, and WowProgress.
More...