warlords-of-draenor-changes
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Class guides updated for Warlords of Draenor and patch 6.0.2
Wondering what's up with your class in Warlords of Draenor and patch 6.0.2? Class guides on both Wowhead and Icy Veins have been updated with all of the class changes you'll find on live servers right now. First up, Icy Veins has updated their popular class guides, including 6.0 transition guides. These are currently aimed at level 90 players, but you should look for them to be updated with level 100 talents and gear in the near future. Next, Wowhead has updated their class guides for Warlords of Draenor at level 100. These guides are aimed at beginners or recently returned players, so if you've just leveled or boosted a new character you should definitely check them out. Each guide also has a section dealing specifically with patch 6.0.2 and any gearing changes you may want to consider at level 90. You might recognize some of the Wowhead guide authors as former WoW Insider class columnists, including yours truly (hunter guide). You can find all of the updated guides right here.
Dev Watercooler: Building Healthy Gameplay
Following last week's blog on the stat squish and CC removal, this morning's offering is a Dev Watercooler on the changes to healing coming with Warlords of Draenor. As ever, the full post is after the break, but let's look at the key summary points here: Player health has been increased relative to player damage and healing This means that Resilience and Battle Fatigue can be reduced in PvP The raw throughput of healers relative to player health has been reduced The aim is for more "triage" healing Burst damage and burst healing are lower. These changes are being taken into account in raid encounter design The healing of "smart heals" is being reduced Mana efficiency of multi-target heals is being reduced Low-throughput, low-mana-cost heals like Nourish, Holy Light, Heal, and Healing Wave, are being removed because they think that while they do add complexity, they don't truly add depth to healing gameplay. There are clearly some huge changes. Hit the break for the full post.
Warlords of Draenor: Racial traits clarified
Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok has posted an extensive run-down on the official forums, detailing the changes to racials which will appear with Warlords of Draenor. Many of these will come as no surprise to people who'd seen some early leaks or followed the discussion on Twitter last Thursday, but nonetheless it's great to see all this spelled out for us in blue and brown. Obviously, with the removal of hit and expertise racials, there's some changes being made. All the bonuses that related to those have been replaced, so that was Draenei, Dwarf, Gnome, Human, Orc, and Troll. All these have been replaced with other bonuses that affect damage output. There have also been changes to what Bashiok refers to as "some outliers", indicating things like the Troll Berserking being brought down from a 20% haste increase to a 15% increase. Orcs' Hardiness also took a hit, now reducing stun duration by 10% instead of 15%. No changes are planned to Pandaren or Worgen racials. It seems like Blizzard is making an effort to remove the obligation to play certain classes in order to maximise efficiency for certain roles. And this can only be a good thing. Hit the break for Bashiok's full post. Edit: There was also a post from Technical Game Designer Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig in the official forums regarding the change to Will of the Forsaken, but not to Every Man For Himself.
