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Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Death Knight changes
Evidently, this is the build where they noticed that Death Knights could tank competently, and decided to do something about that. Where by "something" I refer to the six seven separate tanking nerfs that have ensued. Oh yeah, and they cut Fallen Crusader in half. Rune of the Fallen Crusader - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 15% (down from 30%) for 15 sec. I may be too invested in my class - I actually feel physically ill about this. FC was overpowered, yes, but not that overpowered. Frost Howling Blast damage has been doubled (from 259-281 to 518-562 for max rank), cooldown changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. So I guess we're meant to obliterate when HB is on cooldown, and just use HB once per rune set? Frost Presence now reduces spell damage taken by 10%. (Down from 15%) This is reasonable on its own. Unfortunately, it gets considerably worse. Guile of Gorefiend now increases damage done by your Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and Obliterate abilities by 5/10/15%. (Old - Critical damage only, 15/30/45%) Simple math: if your crit change is greater than 33%, this is a nerf; otherwise, it's a buff. I'm guessing that means it's a buff for most players. Lichborne doesn't increase the chance of your enemies to miss you anymore. Heyo! Goodbye, defensive cooldown. Update: Ghostcrawler has just posted that Unbreakable Armor is getting the same cooldown doubling that all our other analogous defensive cooldowns got. Awesome.
More Druid changes on the 3.1 PTR
The above headline is a polite, succinct means of saying "I went AFK for a few hours yesterday and returned to 2/3 of the Druid class wanting to throw itself in front of an oncoming train."Additions to the latest PTR build aren't extensive for Druids but include a 10% nerf to stamina returns from Heart of the Wild in the feral tree, and a doubling of Lifebloom's mana cost (and reworking of its bloom mechanics) in the Restoration tree.Well, no point checking our watches waiting for the next harbinger of welcome death by way of light commuter rail. Let's take a look.HEART OF THE WILD: Stamina bonus changed to 2/4/6/8/10%.Ouch, baby.Before I write anything else, a quick note to the people spamming the Tanking and Druid forums with End-of-the-World proclamations; it's the frigging public test realm. None of this is set in stone. Calmez-vous.I can finally stay on the PTR without disconnecting every 5-10 minutes, so I hopped on and started comparing the character sheet to my main's live version. The biggest problem right now is that the HotW change (in addition to the Survival of the Fittest armor nerf) has gone live on the PTR without Savage Defense going live alongside it. If you get any toons copied to the PTR or can just finally log on successfully, you'll find yourself down several thousand armor and several thousand HP without Savage Defense active to compensate.
Lichborne: Top Death Knight DPS builds and patch 3.1
Welcome to Lichborne, where we've pretty much gone insane waiting for the PTR, and are thus stuck in the Death Knight starting zone pretending to be a pretty pretty princess on our very own pony. The problem with writing a Death Knight column at the moment is that there's so much that's changing in 3.1 - So much that will change, on the test servers at least, sometime in the next few days. With a promise that Unholy, especially, will probably be nerfed significantly, almost any advice I give right now could be outdated in very short order. That said, after some thought, I figured I might as well take a look at nerfs. Namely, I'd like to take a look at a few popular Death Knight builds, how we already know they'll change, and what other changes may be coming to them.
Encrypted Text: Why the 3.0.9 Rogue changes were necessary
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we dive deep into the 3.0.9 patch changes for Rogues.I remember where I was at when I read the 3.0.9 patch notes when they were forwarded our way on the WoW Insider tip line. I was in line at the grocery store, picking up a gallon of milk and some sausage to make biscuits and gravy. Reading the tiny print on my iPhone, I scrolled down to the Brittle Yellow class text that triggers an instant reaction from any fellow assassin: Rogue changes.Just four tiny lines, yet our entry doubled that of nearly every other class. These short, simple sentences would set the blogging community and the Official Rogue (and General, and Damage Dealing, and Paladin...) Forums ablaze in riot. How could we keep believing in Blizzard? My first thought upon reading the now infamous Assassination nerf: "They're nerfing Mutilate by HOW much?"
Glyph of Holy Light nerfed
Yesterday, the healing forums were flooded with complaints largely by Priests alleging that the new 3.0.8 version of the Paladin Glyph of Holy Light was completely overpowered and made Paladins into group healers, shoe-horning them into a niche recently left half-vacant by our Circle of Healing nerf. Such complainants will presumably be happy to hear that the glyph is being hotfixed, reducing the range from 20 yards to 8. Ghostcrawler calls the glyph "vastly overpowered," and goes on in a later post to give a bit more information. Like most changes, this was not done in response to QQ; as it turns out, the glyph was just overpowered. He also states that [major] glyphs are meant to be "about on par with passive talents" in terms of their power, which is in line with what I've been observing (maybe a few percent increase in damage/healing/mitigation per glyph, for the good ones). At any rate, sorry to my Holy Paladin friends; I guess this one was just too good to last. I'm still jealous of your everlasting mana.
Encrypted Text: Patiently awaiting patch 3.0.8
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we'll discuss the upcoming Rogue changes in patch 3.0.8.According to the SK-Gaming Top 100, Rogues are doing pretty well. Our fraternity of assassins has a solid hold on the coveted #3 slot, behind the insanely dominant Death Knight / Holy Paladin combination. With Druids and Warriors being as powerful as they were in Seasons 3 and 4, seeing them bring up the bottom of the Top 100 representation is the truest indicator of significant balance changes that Wrath brought with it.Luckily, I feel that Rogues are far stronger than our 10% representation shows. We are poised to absorb the market share that Paladin and Death Knights will be hemorrhaging when the long-awaited patch 3.0.8 comes to right all the wrongs that this team has committed. Four of the top six classes in the SK-100 are being nerfed significantly, with Rogues being the least affected by these changes. After the cut, I'll cover important changes for Rogues in 3.0.8, as well as a few changes that will alter our top opponents as well.
Lichborne: One more round of Death Knight changes in 3.0.8
Welcome to Lichborne. Your host is inflicted with the space plague this week, but has done his best to write for you people anyway, so be grateful, you hear?We've covered 3.0.8 pretty extensively, between Mike Sacco's coverage of the initial round of changes and our week before last discussion, but the devs weren't done yet. With 3.0.8 likely to make it to live servers in the next week or two, this is probably a good time to discuss the Death Knight tweaks that have gone in the last few PTR updates.
WoW Moviewatch: Buff My Warlock
I usually stay away from videos that are centered around topical, timely issues like whether Warlocks need some love or buffs right now. They're just not the kind of thing I dig, personally, and they're usually not incredibly well done. Buff My Warlock, however, kind of got my attention. It's basically a protest video, created by author Illustrious for fun and amusement. She feels she can no longer play her Warlock effectively in PvP, and is hoping for a little love from the developers. The singing isn't the best, and I have to admit the audio made me wince a few times. I'm trying to chalk that up to a bad recording or compression, however, since I think the lyrics are actually okay. The ideas were great, and I have vast appreciation for the fact that the message was relatively personable despite being featured in what some would call a "QQ Video." Hopefully, Illustrious can have fun with her chosen character, and maybe keep advancing her machinima skills going forward. I wouldn't hate seeing the next video be "I love my Warlock." If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Scattered Shots: New Year's Resolutions for Hunters and for Blizzard
Welcome to Scattered Shots! This week, your author has managed to take a break from lamenting that the stores about to stop selling eggnog to make a few Hunter-specific resolutions.The New Year is considered by many people to be the time for a fresh start, a time to wipe the slate clean of past missteps, or just to make some changes to your life to make it even better. In that spirit, I'd like to propose some Hunter-related resolutions for both Blizzard and for Hunters in the spirit of promoting peace, harmony, and understanding in the new year for all Survivalists, Marksmen, and Beastmasters.
The best of WoW Insider: December 9-16, 2008
It's that time of year again -- the trees and lights are up in Azeroth, and Winter's Veil is upon us. Father Greatwinter is giving out gifts in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, and Blizzard devs are busy giving players the gift that keeps on giving: nerfs and more nerfs. Follow all of the wintry action at Joystiq's sister site WoW Insider -- if there's something under your tree that you need to know about, it'll be there, along with the usual cookies and milk. News World of Warcraft PTR 3.0.8 patch notesThe first post-expansion patch is queuing up on the test servers, and here's the notes. Mount race restrictions lifted, Tauren rejoiceNow you can mount up on all of the faction mounts, no matter what race you are. Character re-customization added for a small feeBlizzard makes it possible to re-customize your character's look or gender, for a price. FCC Commissioner: World of Warcraft causes college dropoutsThe same woman who blamed television for child obesity blames WoW for people dropping out of college. Warcraft restaurant opens in BeijingT.G.I. Frost Mages? We would also have accepted T.G.I. Fordragon's. Or Arthusbee's, though that last one is bad. Features The great Hunter nerf of 2008 BM Hunters get smacked with the nerf bat. The achievements of Winter's VeilThe Winter holiday has begun on the realms, and here's how to get your holiday title this time around. Patch 3.0.8: Analysis of Death Knight changesChanges to the dead man class in the new patch. Working at Blizzard: Sunshine, rainbows, claymores, backrubsA look inside the doors of one of the best game companies in the world, both from an interview with the COO and our own blogger's experience. Addon Spotlight: AchievementsA few good addons for tracking down all of those new achievement points.
The Light and How to Swing It: Uncle
Uncle.I cry uncle.Please, Blizzard, no more. I've been extremely understanding of the nerfs done to the Paladin class as a whole, intended to reduce the so-called "dominance" of Retribution in PvP. I've always said Blizzard was doing the right thing and was on the right track towards balancing the class. I celebrated the fact that Paladins were actively tuned and assessed -- it was a refreshing change of pace. When nerfs were done to the class, I supported it because I valued game balance.But now this. I'm tired. I'm broken. This latest nerf -- intended for Retribution but affects the entire class -- has brought me to my knees. Blizzard has found a way to undermine Faith, and I no longer feel the comfort and safety of my Divine Shield of naiveté. In fact, right now I feel quite vulnerable with Forbearance, and the weight is quite heavy upon my shoulders. Right now, I just feel really disillusioned, disappointed, and lost.
[UPDATED] Invincible vengeance no more
Retribution Paladins continue to take a beating. As much as Ghostcrawler tried to soften the blow in his post, there just isn't any nice way to go about this -- Blizzard is looking for a way to make Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath to be mutually exclusive once again. He says that the combination of both spells contribute to the impression that the spec is overpowered. Blizzard might do this through Forebearance, but says that they're also looking to reduce the duration of Forebearance through a hotfix. This means it's a pretty serious issue considering the duration of Forebearance was also intended to balance or space out the use of Divine Shield and Divine Protection. They have no timetable for the change, although it should be expected that it will be applied soon. Blizzard doesn't seem to hold back on nerfing the Paladin class, stating that "the last round of pretty severe nerfs didn't seem to do enough to Ret's dominance of PvP".These are very fast reactions to nerf a spec that was "dominant" for all of a few weeks in a metagame that is tuned for Level 80. This is an extremely disappointing course of action in comparison to the complete absence of nerfs to Druids despite their utter dominance of the Arena format for three seasons (reducing Cyclone's range wasn't quite the solution, was it?). Paladin representation in Arenas went on sharp decline through all four seasons -- and this includes the Holy spec.[UPDATE: The nerf has been applied on live realms. So much for the advanced warning Ghostcrawler was talking about. Avenging Wrath now causes Forebearance, and Forebearance's duration has been reduced to 2 minutes.]
Some Paladin nerfs to go live before 3.0.3
Ghostcrawler announced on the Beta forums earlier that some aspects of the much dreaded -- yet somehow expected -- Paladin nerfs are going to be hotfixed into the game immediately, in order to enable more testing of the nerf in PvP and PvE. This comes in the midst of the Paladin community's uproar at the severe adjustments to the class, with some players calling Blizzard out on their numbers and the data from which they concluded that the spec needed such severe -- and not surgical -- tuning down.The changes that will go live are the 20% damage reduction to Seal of Command and its Judgement, as well as the reduction of Judgements of the Wise mana return from 33% of base mana to 15%. To further illustrate that the nerfs are intended for PvP, Ghostcrawler also happily announces that Seal of Blood / the Martyr will be un-nerfed to about "95% of where the (sic) used to be" in Patch 3.0.3. He says that, "hopefully this will compensate PvE Retadins for relying less on more expensive AE abilities that risk putting them out of mana."The statements are curious on several points. In his lengthy response to the community, Ghostcrawler shot down accusations that the spec was being nerfed because of PvP by saying, "Ret PvE dps was also too high." If that's true, it's interesting that Blizzard is un-nerfing Seal of Blood / the Martyr. Both are PvE Retribution DPS Seals, and higher damage coefficients from the spells will result directly in higher DPS. This is good news, no question about it. It's just confusing.
Divine Storm now less divine
As promised, it looks like Retribution has been nerfed, through a hotfix. The substance of the nerf is as follows: Divine Storm now does physical damage, not Holy. This means, among other things, it's mitigated by armor, which should obviously cut its damage significantly against certain classes. Many people have noticed a similarity between this sequence of events and something that happened back when 2.0 was released, right before Burning Crusade. Divine Storm is the 51-point Retribution talent. The 41-point Ret talent, Crusader Strike, was pretty overpowered at level 60, so Blizz nerfed it, only to have to buff it back up later in the expansion. The Divine Storm nerf is, similarly, in the context of level 70 balance. At level 80, where much of the Wrath balance testing has been done, Divine Storm may well have fit right in. Is an un-nerf coming when Wrath is released? Paladins can only hope. Update: I am also told that they may have reduced the health/mana returned from Judgment of Light and Judgment of Wisdom by 50%, and reduced the damage of Judgment of Command by 25%. There still isn't a blue post that I can find about any of this, so it's hard to confirm -- can anyone confirm/deny the Judgment changes? [thanks, Nyttyn]
Ret to be nerfed "to the ground"
Now Ret pallies, don't panic. Ghostcrawler was joking in that quote, but it was too good not to use for a headline. As most people have figured out by now, Retribution's damage post-patch, especially in PvP, is a little overpowered. GC says that Blizz is worried specifically about the burst damage potential, and the fact that it's Holy damage, which resistances typically do not affect. It took them a while to diagnose this particular balance issue, because there was a bug with weapon equipping; now that that's fixed, Blizz is in a much better position to figure exactly what needs to be done. GC also says that they think Ret DPS is good in PvE right now. They want to make sure that sustained PvE damage is not negatively impacted, and they don't want to over-nerf PvP either. That said, there are going to be some changes soon, "perhaps even hotfixes." I doubt anyone is very surprised. How would you adjust the situation, dear readers?
Encrypted Text: Dough for your cookie cutters
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. In this special 3.0.2 edition of Encrypted Text, we'll be talking about the new talent trees that are coming this Tuesday with the release of the patch.With 3.0.2 right around the corner, all three of our precious talent trees are about to get shaken up. Talents are getting moved around, point costs are travelling in both directions, and a lot of rebalancing is taking place. Blizzard has been removing bloat from certain areas, and also adding some very cool new abilities for our class.With all these changes, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. (Get it? Talent trees? Haha!) For a detailed analysis of all the changes, I recommend reading the patch notes. I am going to give my readers (you) exactly what a busy Rogue wants: what's nerfed, what's buffed, what's good when the dust settles?
Raids rebalanced for Patch 3.0.2
As of last night's beta (and PTR) patch, players have been reporting that mob health throughout all of the Burning Crusade raid zones have been reduced by up to 30%. That struck me as really, really odd, so I decided to pop into Sunwell Plateau and Black Temple to take a look. It is, in fact, completely true. Every mob and boss that I could see in both zones (and I could see a lot- Mind Vision hopping through raids for the win) had their HP drastically reduced.My gut instinct was, "Ugh, why are they nerfing everything so badly? That's ridiculous. Just because it's the end of the expansion doesn't mean they need to make it easy mode for us." Then I actually thought (gasp!) about it for a little bit. Looking at the changes coming in Patch 3.0.2, this was a change they needed to make to let us still raid until Wrath. A lot of encounters probably became impossible to beat as they were with those changes, Sunwell Plateau especially. Sunwell was designed with all of the insanely OP stuff players were doing to win in mind. Stacking Shadow Priests for mana regen, stacking Shaman to chain-cast Heroism/Bloodlust, half the raid going Leatherworking for Drums, yadda yadda.
8926 a test of faith for Holy priests
If it hadn't already become clear that 8926 was a nerf build, looking at the list of Holy Priest changes would make it pretty obvious. Let's go over some "highlights," shall we? Twin Disciplines now only affects instant spells (previously affected all spells). This is utterly ridiculous. Alright, it may have been marginally overpowered before, but now it basically only affects five six spells: Renew, Power Word: Shield, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death. It no longer fulfills its function of being decent filler for people who aren't Disc to get to the next few tiers down. Improved Holy Concentration now increases the chance you'll enter Holy Concentration by 1/2/3% (down from 4/7/10%) and also increases your spell haste by 10/20/30% (down from 20/40/60%) on your next (down from "three next") Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Binding Heal spells after you gain Holy Concentration. Lasts 20 sec. So they took a talent that people were already complaining was underwhelming and hard to use, and cut it by two-thirds. Excellent. Test of Faith now increases healing by 2/4/6% (down from 5/10/15%) and spell critical effect chance by 2/4/6 (down from 4/7/10%) on friendly targets at or below 50% health. Same story as Imp. Holy Concentration. Why would they do that? I honestly don't understand.
Scattered Shots: It ain't over till it's over
Scattered Shots occasionally wanders around collecting arrows and bullets when they totally miss the target.The key to understanding hunters in the beta is to look at the big picture. This is something affecting all classes currently, but I'm going to discuss it in relation to hunters in particular. Beta testing buffs and nerfs ultimately come down to a matter of perspective -- do you see your class changes happening in isolation, for now and forever as long as you and your pet shall live? Or are your particular class changes happening as part of an ever-evolving system involving you, me and everyone else over time?As you've probably heard, hunters got some nerfs in the latest beta update, and some people are understandably upset about them. I'm not worried about it though -- and now I'll tell you why.
Age of Conan gems and more addressed on Testlive
After our explanation of why gems are an issue in Age of Conan, the next thing to look for was a nerf, and probably quite a big one. It was with very little surprise, then, that we took a look at the notes for the latest patch to go to Testlive this morning and saw this lurking among them: 'Reduced the bonuses granted by all Invulnerability, Evade, Fatality, Offhand Chance, and Damage gems by a significant amount.'Just how significant is 'significant'? Poster Threeze from the AoC forums has kindly put together a reference chart. As you can see, that is some epic nerfing. +8.9% one-handed damage down to +0.5% one-handed damage? The coders at Funcom are not messing about here. While bearing in mind that this is only a Testlive patch and isn't guaranteed to go live, it would solve the issue of extreme gem-powered damage in PvP. And judging by the rest of the patch notes, addressing PvP is a major priority. Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!
