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Warlords of Draenor Alpha Notes Updated

by - 10 years ago

Community manager Rygarius updated the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor alpha testing patch notes yesterday. The largest portion of the updates seem to focus on Druids, Hunters, Priests, Warlocks, and Warriors, with other class and mechanic updates sprinkled in along the way.

The alpha stage of a Blizzard game typically involves the most change and fluidity, and the coming WoW expansion is no exception. As patch 6.0.0 and Warlods of Draenor (WoD) come clearer into focus, Blizzard community managers (CMs) bring this up time and again, either as a legitimate argument or as deflection on a complicated topic. The short of it: take every change with a grain of salt.

In regards to what seem like a long series of nerfs, keep in mind that we don’t have the whole picture of how the expansion plays or every mechanic change that factors into how skills and other mechanics behave. As Rygarius responds, “It’s not a simple of matter of comparing X ability now deals 15% more damage because between the stat squishplayer health pools increasing, and a number of other system wide changes are altering the frame of reference.”

With all that junk out of the way, let’s get down to…

The 6.0.0 Skinny

If you just want to see the updated notes, here you go. Just the updates. No boring quips or snarky attacks on your attention span. I promise. (For the full list of changes, including the old notes, read the official blog post here.)

Changes are denoted in bold and reversions are denoted in bolded strikethrough text. Some extra paragraphs or bullet points were retained where they aided in comprehension.

Game System Changes

Itemization Changes

General

  • New secondary stats added:
    • Multistrike: Grants a chance for spells and abilities to fire up to 2 additional times, at 30% effectiveness (both damage and healing).
    • Readiness: Reduces the cooldown on several abilities with long-cooldowns for the class. The tooltip for Readiness displays a list of affected abilities.

Ability Pruning

Death Knight

  • Blood Boil has been removed and its effects have been merged into Pestilence.
  • Rune Strike has been removed. Blood Death Knights now use Death Coil in its place.

Druid

  • Pounce has been removed. Abilities which modified Pounce now modify Rake instead.
    • Rake now also stuns the target for 4 seconds when used while stealthed.
  • Ravage has been removed.
  • Shred is now available to all Druid specializations and now deals an additional 35% damage while stealthed.

Hunter

  • Distracting Shot has been removed.
  • Rapid Fire is now available only to Marksmanship Hunters. has been removed.

Monk

  • Spinning Fire Blossom has been removed.

Paladin

  • Art of War has been removed.
    • Exorcism’s cooldown now naturally has a chance to be reset on auto attacks.

Rogue

  • Ambidexterity has been removed.

Warlock

  • Curse of Exhaustion and Curse of the Elements now affect all enemies within 10 yards of the target, and are no longer mutually exclusive.
  • Drain Soul has been removed.
  • Malefic Grasp has been removed. Its effects have been merged into Drain Soul, which Affliction Warlocks should use in its place.
  • Soulshatter has been removed.

Warrior

  • Berserker Rage no longer Enrages the Warrior, generates Rage or increases Physical damage dealt. It now functions to break and provide immunity from Fears, Incapacitates, and Saps.
  • Mortal Strike now replaces Heroic Strike for Arms Warriors.
  • Overpower has been removed.

Raid Utility Balance

Hunter

  • A minor Raid utility ability (to-be-determined) will be added for Hunters.

Mage

  • Amplify Magic is a new spell available to Mages.
    • Amplify Magic amplifies the effects of helpful magic, increasing all healing received by 12% for all party and raid members within 100 yards, and lasts 6 seconds with a 2-minute cooldown.

Primary Character Stats and Attack Power

We’ve consolidated the way that Attack Power and Spell Power function and scale, to make those values clearer and correct some scaling issues regarding caster weapons relative to physical weapons.

  • Weapon Damage values on all weapons have been reduced by 50%.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns

Paladin

  • Repentance’s cast time has been increased to 1.7 seconds.
  • Turn Evil’s cast time has been increased to 1.7 seconds and now has a 6-second duration in PvP (down from 8 seconds).

Buffs and Debuffs

Weakened Armor and Physical Vulnerability were effectively redundant, both filling the role of increasing Physical damage taken by the target. We removed Weakened Armor and widened the availability of Physical Vulnerability and increased its effectiveness slightly.

Weakened Armor and Physical Vulnerability

  • Physical Vulnerability increases physical damage taken by 5% (up from 4%).
    • The following abilities no longer apply the Weakened Armor effect:
      • Druid: Faerie Fire now applies Physical Vulnerability, increasing Physical damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds.

Tank Vengeance and Resolve

[T]o keep tank DPS meaningful, we’ll be raising their damage, since it would be meager with no Vengeance Attack Power (Vengeance accounted for 70-90% of a tank’s damage on high-tank-damage fights in Mists). To do that, we’re increasing the damage of several prominent tank abilities, as well as having tanks also gain increased Attack Power from Mastery and Bonus Armor, in addition to the stat’s existing benefits. For plate-wearing Tank specializations, Riposte has been redesigned to convert Critical Strike into Parry, a defensive stat. That also helps keep secondary stats balanced in offensive value for them.

General

  • Riposte is a passive ability for Blood Death Knights, Protection Paladins, and Protection warriors.
    • Riposte now gives the character Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear.
  • All tanking stances and similar effects now increases threat generated by 900% (up from 600%).

Classes

Death Knight

  • Heart Strike damage has been increased by 30%, but no longer deals additional damage for each disease present on the target.
  • Heart Strike has been removed. Blood Death Knights should use Pestilence in its place.

Druid

Guardian Druids had increased Armor as their Mastery for a while now. However, one of the new secondary stats available to all tanks is Bonus Armor. We didn’t feel that the difference of being additive vs. being a multiplier was significant enough to warrant keeping their Mastery around. Additionally, active mitigation hasn’t played out as well for Guardians as it has for some other tanks. We decided to redesign the Mastery for Guardian Druids to something that compliments the Avoidance-heavy nature of Savage Defense, and also to improve the usability of Tooth and Claw for more consistent damage reduction. Note that Primal Tenacity’s calculation uses the damage before any other absorbs you have, and before Tooth and Claw’s effects, so that it isn’t negatively affected by any of those. Note that Primal Tenacity’s calculation uses the damage before any other absorbs you have, and before Tooth and Claw’s effects, so that it isn’t negatively affected by any of the changes. The maximum number of charges that can be accumulated for Savage Defense has been reduced to make its uptime more consistent between short and long periods of tanking. Rage for Guardian Druids has been problematic throughout Mists of Pandaria. Most of their rage generation was extremely passive, and most of their button presses either didn’t affect their survivability, or only trivially did so. We made changes to Haste and Crit, to try to solve these rage generation problems, and improve their rotation. We also added Ursa Major, in order to give a defensive value to the new Multistrike stat.

  • Ursa Major is a new passive ability for Guardian Druids
    • Ursa Major: Multistrikes from auto attacks, Lacerate periodic damage, and Mangle grants the Druid the Ursa Major effect. Ursa Major increases maximum health by 2% for 30 seconds. When the effect is refreshed, the remaining portion is added to the new effect.
  • Lacerate now generates 5 Rage, has no cooldown (down from a 3-second cooldown), and the periodic bleed effect triggers every 1 second (down from 3 seconds). but no longer has a chance to reset Mangle’s cooldown.
  • Savage Defense can now accumulate 2 charges (down from 3 charges).

Feral Druids received one major change, and few tweaks beyond what’s been mentioned above in Ability Pruning and Facing Requirements. Combo Points are now stored “on the player”, meaning that when you switch targets, any accumulated Combo Points remain with you. Pounce was buffed significantly, in order to bring it up to par with Ravage. Primal Fury was changed to let it affect area attacks as well. Glyph of Savage Roar was reworked to better achieve its intended effect.

  • Mangle now generates 15 Rage (up from 5 Rage), and its cooldown is reduced by Haste.
  • Glyph of Savagery has been renamed Glyph of Savage Roar, and now grants a free 5 Combo Point Savage Roar when leaving Prowl, instead of allowing Savage Roar to be used with 0 Combo Points.

We have some extensive changes for Balance Druids. One of our guiding principles with game design is that things should be “easy to learn, hard to master”. We’re not particularly happy with the Moonkin rotation because it was actually hard to learn, and easy to master (especially with regards to periodic damage effects no longer snapshotting). Energy and Eclipse mechanics were not intuitive for many newer players. Once you became accustomed to the rotation, there wasn’t much additional depth to mastering it; maintain two DoTs, hit these other two buttons whenever they light up, and spam one of two buttons in between. In order to try to make it easier to learn, but also add some gameplay depth and challenge we’re making a significant revision to the rotation. The list of changes is quite dense, so here’s a summary of the changes.

Summary of changes to Balance:

  • Balance Energy is a bar that automatically cycles back and forth between Lunar and Solar sides, like night and day. The closer to one end that the bar is, the more damage that side’s spells do.
  • Balance Druids now have four rotational spells.
    • Starfire: Lunar direct damage spell
      • Cast when the Lunar side is stronger
    • Wrath: Solar direct damage spell
      • Cast when the Solar side is stronger
    • Moonfire: Lunar periodic damage spell. While closer to Solar, this button is replaced with Sunfire, a Solar periodic damage spell.
      • Maintain both effects where possible
    • Starsurge: Direct damage spell that benefits from whichever side is stronger. Has up to 3 charges, and buffs the damage of the next few Wraths or Starfires.
      • Cast when able to follow up with a few strong Wraths or Starfires.

That’s the basics of the new Moonkin rotation. There’s room for improvement beyond that, learning to optimally maintain both periodic damage effects with the strongest Eclipse effect, timing Starsurges to optimize the benefit of its buff, make use of Starfall and Hurricane for area damage, and taking advantage of the strengths of each side (such as Moonfire and Sunfire having significant differences now). Here are the full details of the changes.

  • Balance Energy system has been redesigned. Balance Energy is a bar that cycles back and forth between Lunar and Solar sides, like night and day, with a 30 second cycle time (from Lunar to Solar and back to Lunar).
    • Balance Energy is no longer generated through spells, talents, or other effects anymore.
  • Eclipse has been redesigned.
    • Eclipse inspires the Druid with the power of the moon and the sun, causing the damage of Lunar and Solar spells to be increased by up to 30% based on how close Balance Energy levels are to the appropriate side.
      • Example: With 0 Balance Energy, the damage bonus is evenly split between Lunar and Solar, and the Druid receives a 15% increase to damage for both spell types. With 80 Solar Energy, the Druid receives a 27% damage increase to Solar spells and a 3% damage increase to Lunar spells.
    • Mastery: Total Eclipse now increases the maximum damage bonus of Eclipse by 12% (increasing with Mastery).
  • Starfire now has a 3 second cast time (up from 2.7 seconds).
  • Moonfire now has a 16 second base duration (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Starfire and Starsurge critical strikes.
  • Sunfire now has a 16 second duration (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Wrath and Starsurge critical strikes. Additionally, Sunfire is no longer its own spell. Sunfire replaces Moonfire on the action bar whenever Balance Energy is on the Solar side. Enemies may still suffer from both Moonfire and Sunfire’s periodic damage components simultaneously.
  • Lunar Shower has been redesigned and renamed Astral Showers.
    • Astral Showers calls upon greater Lunar and Solar energy to permanently empower the Druid’s Moonfire and Sunfire spells.
      • Moonfire’s initial damage is increased by 100%, and the duration of its periodic damage effect is increased by 100%.
      • Sunfire’s initial damage is increased by 100%, and its periodic damage effect is now applied to all enemies within 5 yards of the target.
  • Starsurge now has 3 charges and a 30 second recharge time (instead of a 15 second cooldown). Starsurge now also grants Lunar or Solar Empowerment.
    • Lunar Empowerment causes the next 2 Starfires to deal 30% more damage.
    • Solar Empowerment causes the next 3 Wraths to deal 30% more damage.
  • Starfall now shares charges with Starsurge, and has no cooldown of its own. It also now hits all nearby enemies (up from 2 nearby enemies).
  • Shooting Stars now adds 1 full charge of Starsurge and Starfall when it triggers, and now has a 2.5% chance to trigger on Moonfire and Sunfire periodic damage. This chance is doubled on critical strikes.
  • Hurricane’s range has been increased to 35 yards (up from 30 yards).
  • Astral Storm has been removed.
  • Wild Mushroom (Balance) now begins snaring enemies immediately when summoned, lasts 20 seconds, and can no longer be detonated to deal damage.
    • Wild Mushroom: Detonate has been removed.
  • Celestial Alignment has been redesigned.
    • Celestial Alignment causes the Druid to enter Celestial Alignment, a state where Balance Energy cycle is paused, and all Lunar and Solar spells benefit from the maximum Eclipse bonus. Lasts 15 seconds with a 3 minute cooldown.
  • Astral Communion now increases the rate that Balance Energy cycles by 300% while channeled.
  • Euphoria has been removed.
  • Insect Swarm has been redesigned and renamed Stellar Flare.
    • Stellar Flare is a powerful spell benefitting from both Lunar and Solar Eclipses, dealing the most damage when they are equal. Burns the target for Spellstorm damage and cause additional damage over 15 seconds. The ability has a cast time of 1.5 seconds.
  • Soul of the Forest (Balance) has been redesigned.
    • Soul of the Forest (Balance) now increases the damage bonus from Lunar and Solar Empowerment by an additional 30%.
  • Equinox has been replaced with a new talent, Balance of Power.
    • Balance of Power causes Wrath to extend the duration of Sunfire by 4 seconds and Starfire to extend the duration of Moonfire by 6 seconds.
  • Sunfall has been replaced with a new talent, Euphoria.
    • Euphoria grants the Druid a deeper connection to the stars, causing Balance Energy to cycle 50% faster. Additionally, Starsurge also grants 20% Haste for 6 seconds.
  • Several Glyphs and Draenor Perks will be redesigned in a future build, and so are currently TBD.
    • Glyph of Omens
    • Glyph of Sudden Eclipse
    • Empowered Starfall
    • Enhanced Mushrooms
    • Enhanced Starsurge
    • Enhanced Storms

Restoration Druids got a few changes as well. In Patch 5.4, a Glyph was introduced where you could choose to attach your Efflorescence to Wild Mushroom, instead of to Swiftmend. That was a rousing success, taken by nearly all Restoration Druids, and felt like a much better situation to us, so we decided to remove the glyph choice, and bake it in permanently. Secondly, while we are fine with the playstyle where a Restoration Druid blankets their Raid in Rejuvenations, the Swift Rejuvenation passive made that too strong, and also limited their scaling with Haste. We removed that passive, to encourage using other spells more, but still allow Rejuvenation blanketing as a playstyle choice. Omen of Clarity got changed to not trigger more often with Tree of Life; it was too strong in our new healing model. Soul of the Forest was also redesigned for Restoration and Genesis to fit better with the new design for periodic effects.

  • Genesis has been redesigned.
    • Genesis now consumes all of the Druid’s Rejuvenation effects on party or raid members within 60 yards and applies the Genesis effect to them instead. Genesis heals the target for an amount equal to the remaining healing from the consumed Rejuvenation effects over 3 seconds. Healing from Genesis counts toward Wild Mushroom as if it was from Rejuvenation.
  • Omen of Clarity (Restoration) can now only be triggered by the most recently applied Lifebloom.
  • Soul of the Forest for Restoration Druids has been redesigned.
    • Soul of the Forest (Restoration) when casting Swiftmend, the Druid gains Soul of the Forest. Soul of the Forest reduces the cast time of the next Healing Touch by 50%, or increases the healing of the next Regrowth, Rejuvenation, or Wild Growth by 100%.

The level 90-Talent row for Druids was designed to encourage hybrid gameplay. We decided that, while you shouldn’t have to give up a significant amount of your primary role throughput in order to gain the off-role benefit, you also don’t need to gain an actual benefit to your primary role throughput benefit either. We’ve reduced the power of their primary role benefit, making them roughly neutral in their effect on your primary role. Note that the increase to off-role healing from Nature’s Vigil is not actually a buff (see Healing and Player Health above).

  • Dream of Cenarius
    • Feral: Increases the healing of Healing Touch and Rejuvenation by 20%, and causes them to also heal the Druid when cast on allies. Casting Healing Touch no longer increases the damage of the Druid’s next 2 melee abilities, or increases the healing of Rejuvenation.

Hunter

Each Hunter specialization received a revision to the burst-damage-cooldowns they have access to. All specializations now have one burst-damage-cooldown available baseline, and can add to that through talent choices.

Beast Mastery Hunters retain Bestial Wrath. Rapid Fire is a good fit for Marksmanship, and we improved it. For Survival, we wanted to both increase the prominence of their traps, and give them a new damage cooldown. So, a new trap called Bear Trap has been created to fit that role. Note that Bear Trap’s base cooldown can be reduced by other passive abilities and perks, such that it has roughly a 2 minute-cooldown afterwards.

  • Bear Trap is a new ability for Survival Hunters.
    • Bear Trap places a trap with duration of 1 minute that immobilizes the first enemy that triggers it for 8 seconds and deals heavy bleed damage over 20 seconds. Damage from other sources may break the immobilization effect. The ability has a 4 minute cooldown.
  • Careful Aim now also provides its effect against all targets when Rapid Fire is active.

There were also a few other changes, primarily for quality of life and rotational consistency.

  • Aimed Shot now deals 20% more damage, no longer interrupts Auto Attacks, and can be cast while moving.

Mage

In order to solve all of these problems, we decided to merge the 3 current Bomb Talents into one that changes based on spec. That allows us to reintroduce spec-specific perks to each Bomb, and makes room for some non-DoT alternatives.

  • Nether Tempest, Living Bomb, and Frost Bomb are now available to their corresponding specialization only, and share the left Talent slot.
    • Nether Tempest can now only be on 1 target at a time (down from unlimited), but its secondary damage now hits all targets in range (up from only 1), deals 100% of the primary damage (up from 50%), and its damage is now increased by Arcane Charges.
  • Unstable Magic is a new Talent available at level 75, in the middle Talent slot.
    • Unstable Magic: Arcane Blast, Fireball, and Frostbolt have a 25% chance to explode on impact, dealing an additional 50% damage to the target, and all other enemies within 8 yards.

Frost Mages enjoyed newfound PvE viability in Mists of Pandaria, and we intend to continue that into the future. However, we do want to clean up some rough spots, especially around their valuing of secondary stats, and the amount of instant-cast spells in their rotation. The Frost Armor and Shatter changes increase the amount of Haste/Critical chance that they can acquire on gear before they start hitting soft caps. The Shatter change also lowers the value of Critical Strike for a bit. The changes to the level-75 Talent row meant that having a Bomb spell is no longer guaranteed, so we changed the way that Brain Freeze is triggered. We also changed Brain Freeze’s effect, in order to give Frost mages another cast-time spell in their rotation.

  • Frost Armor now grants an 8% chance to Multistrike instead of 7% Haste.
  • The Brain Freeze effect now increases no longer makes Frostfire Bolt damage by 25%, and instant, but it can now stack up to 2 times instead of making Frostfire Bolt instant. It also no longer triggers from the Bomb Talents, and instead has a 10% chance to trigger from Frostbolt casts. Each Multistrike of Frostbolt increases that cast’s chance by an additional 45%. (Total of 100% on double-Multistrikes).
  • Glyph of Icy Veins now causes Icy Veins to provide 35% chance to Multistrike, instead of 20% Haste.

Rotation for Fire Mage is looking solid with the new Draenor Perks. However, their cooldown strength could use a buff.

  • Combustion’s damage has been increased by 100%.

Monk

Now that we have the time to tweak things, and for Mistweavers to acquire new gear, we’re going to make changes to get them in the right spot. Initially, we experimented with giving Mistwavers a 1-second GCD akin to that of the Rogue to give them a faster combat feel. However, it’s proven difficult to balance. Haste is attractive to healers because it lowers not just cast time but GCD as well. Therefore, Monks valued Haste much less than other healers. We explored a few options, but ultimately landed on changing the core GCD for Mistweavers from 1 second to the standard 1.5 seconds, which you will be able to reduce with Haste. This will feel jarring at first, but we’re confident that it’s for the best, long-term.

  • Soothing Mist’s healing has been increased by 100%, its GCD has been reduced to 0.5 seconds, but no longer heals immediately, and no longer generates Chi. for Mistweaver Monks.
  • Summon Jade Serpent Statue now has a 10-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds).
  • Thunder Focus Tea no longer costs Chi, causes the next Renewing Mist to jump up to 4 times (used to cause instead of causing the next Uplift to refresh the duration of Renewing Mists on all targets). Its effect on Surging Mist remains unchanged.

There were several changes that affected multiple Monk specializations. We’d like to see Monks using Transcendence more often, so its usability has been improved (some baseline, and some in a Draenor Perk). For Touch of Death, we like that it’s a unique execute being usable only once, but found it impractical to use on bosses and have improved its usability. For Tiger Strikes, we buffed it to grant Multistrike ability which it was similar to already, and extended it to work with all Monk specializations. To better balance the damage of Brewmaster versus Windwalker where both share many of the same abilities, we removed the damage increase provided by Tiger Stance, and increased the damage of melee abilities to compensate.

  • Stance of the Fierce Tiger no longer increases damage dealt.
  • Tiger Strikes is now available to all Monk specializations, and has a chance to trigger on successful auto attacks and their Multistrikes. It has an 8% chance to trigger while using a two-handed weapon, and a 5% chance to trigger while dual wielding.
    • When triggered, Tiger Strikes now grants a 25% increase to Multistrike for 8 seconds instead of a 50% increase to attack speed and double attacks for 4 attacks.

For Brewmasters, Gift of the Ox has been modified to allow it to scale defensively with the new Multistrike stat. The Black Ox Statue has been modified to aid Monks in establishing aggro on new enemies instead of shielding allies. We also removed the Misfire effect, as it did not live up to its original idea, and was unnecessary.

  • Black Ox Statue no longer casts Guard on allies and now has a 10-second cooldown (down from 30 seconds). Black Ox Statue now passively attracts the attention of all enemies within 30 yards, causing a minor amount of threat each second.
  • Dizzying Haze no longer causes the target’s melee attacks to sometimes misfire.

Paladin

We made several changes for Holy, to go along with other larger system changes to compensate for the removal of Guardian of Ancient Kings from Holy, and merged its benefits into Divine Favor. In order to follow through on our change to merge all types of Haste %, we removed the Spell Haste % from Seal of Insight to a Holy-only passive, so that it didn’t also increase Protection’s baseline Haste by 10%. Our changes to healer mana and mobility also indirectly increased the value of Selfless Healer by a large amount, so we brought it back down to be even in power with the other talents on its row. We also raised the range of Denounce to be consistent with other spells.

  • Avenging Wrath now also increases all of the Paladin’s healing by 20% for its duration.

We wanted to improve Seal gameplay for Protection and Retribution, so have made a few changes in that regard. Protection had three Seals, but only used Insight due to its defensive value. We’ve moved that defensive value into a passive for Protection Paladins, and expect them to primarily use a mixture of Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness now. To provide better gameplay between Seal of Truth and Seal of Righteousness, and effectively remove a button, we made Seal of Righteousness transform Crusader Strike into Hammer of the Righteous.

  • Inner Light is a new passive ability for Protection Paladins and provides a chance for each melee attack to heal the Paladin.
    • Glyph of the Battle Healer is now available only for Protection Paladins, and affects healing from Inner Light instead of Seal of Insight.
  • Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous are no longer separate spells.
    • Seal of Righteousness now also causes Crusader Strike to be replaced with Hammer of the Righteous while active.
  • Seal of Insight no longer gives melee attacks a chance to heal the Paladin.

Priest

For Holy Priests, our biggest concern is with the Chakras. We think that Chakras are the defining abilities of Holy Priests, but that they haven’t lived up to their potential. We decided to move more of their effectiveness from their raw throughput buff (which felt like a penalty for being in the wrong chakra, rather than a bonus for being in the right Chakra) into their bonus effects, and the Holy Word spells that they grant. Please note that all Priest healing spells have been retuned to account for the loss of throughput increases from Chakras. We also returned Renew to a normal 1.5-second global cooldown (GCD), so that Renew blanketing is still possible, but less ideal without Haste. Finally, the ability for Power Word: Shield to critically strike or Multistrike is now baseline for all Priest specializations instead of just Disciplins so that it continues to be a viable choice for Holy at higher gear levels.

  • Cascade no longer refreshes the duration of Renew for Chakra: Serenity.
  • Circle of Healing’s cooldown is now 12 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
  • Chakra: Sanctuary no longer now increases healing of area-of-effect spells. It now causes healing spell casts to reduce the remaining cooldown on Circle of Healing by 1 second instead of always reducing the cooldown by 2 seconds. by 10% (down from 25%).
  • Chakra: Serenity no longer now increases healing of single-target spells. by 10% (down from 25%).
  • Divine Aegis no longer grants Power Word: Shield a chance to critically strike.
  • Power Word: Shield now has a chance for a critical effect based on critical strike chance and can Multistrike based on Multistrike chance for all specializations.

Several talents got split into different versions by specialization. We revised the effectiveness of some of these talents to better balance talent choices on their rows.

  • From Darkness, Comes Light has been split into Surge of Light for Discipline and Holy, and Surge of Darkness for Shadow for Shadow.
  • Solace and Insanity has been split into Power Word: Solace for Discipline and Holy, and Insanity for Shadow.
  • Surge of Light’s activation chance has been reduced to 10% (down from 15%).

There are a few other miscellaneous changes. One is a quality-of-life change for healing Priests. The other is a fix for a problem with Void Tendrils, where it lasts its full duration against creatures that had no way to attack it (such as in certain Raid encounters). Note that the health reduction is to keep it where it was in health, compared to player health doubling. The third is an efficient AoE healing spell for Discipline Priests. And finally, we swapped the Level-15 and Level-60 talent rows so players are presented with core Priest themed abilities earlier in the leveling process.

  • Angelic Feathers now increases movement speed by 60% (down from 80%). If cast on players, will always prefer the casting Priest over others, then pick the player closest to the targeted location. If there are no players where it is targeted, it will still create a feather that can be picked up, as before. Additionally, when collecting multiple feathers, the duration will be extended instead of replaced; up to a maximum of 130% of base duration.

Rogue

In our efforts to reduce cooldown stacking across the game, we chose to remove the damage increase from Tricks of the Trade. And second, we decided to loosen the weapon requirements on Assassination. It’s important to note that we still intend for daggers to be the optimal choice for Assassination Rogues, but this change will help Rogues who want to try out Assassination but don’t have two daggers.

  • Assassin’s Resolve no longer requires daggers to function.
  • Dispatch can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 331% weapon damage (instead of 480%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
  • Mutilate can now be used with fist weapons or one-handed swords, dealing 137% weapon damage (instead of 200%) when used with those weapons instead of a dagger.
  • Sinister Strike now deals 188% weapon damage when used with a dagger (instead of 130%).

Worth noting here is the removal of Ambidexterity. This was done to reduce the amount of damage coming from auto attacks for Combat Rogues. We’ve increased the damage of their active abilities to compensate and make them more rewarding.

To better balance the scaling rates and value of secondary stats for Subtlety, we reduced the power of their Sinister Calling passive ability.

  • Sinister Calling now increases Agility by 15% (down from 30%).

Shaman

In Warlords of Draenor, we’re pulling back on the ability for many casters to deal damage while moving, and that includes Elemental. They will still have some ability to deal damage while moving, through Shocks, Unleash Weapon, and instant Lava Bursts. For Chain Lightning, we wanted to reduce the impact of Haste soft capping, and so changed Shamanism to increase damage instead of reduce cast time. Additionally, we simplified Wind Shear by removing its impact on threat, which no longer matters.

  • Earth Elemental deals 90% less Auto Attack damage but generates 1000% more threat.
  • Using Unleashed Fury with Windfury Weapon imbue active now increases Multistrike chance by 5%.

Restoration Shaman had the most passive and smart healing of any healer, and so received some reductions in that area, along with buffs elsewhere to keep them competitive. One particular change is to Mana Tide Totem, which we made less effective for other players, but still just as effective for the Shaman. We like that Shaman could help other healers out on mana, but it was just too strong, significantly impacting how those other healers gear themselves.

  • Tidal Waves now reduces the cast time of Healing Wave by 20% (down from 30%).
  • Unleash Life no longer increases the healing from Healing Rain but its direct healing has been increased by 100%.

 

Warlock

For Affliction, we’re happy with their rotation. But, Drain Soul was causing them to be too strong in situations where they had a steady supply of small creatures to kill. We reduced the effectiveness of its on-kill effect in order to solve this.

  • Drain Soul now creates 1 Soul Shard (down from 4 Soul Shards) when the target dies.

Kil’jaeden’s Cunning was a problematic talent. We’ve reduced the ability for ranged damage dealers to deal damage while moving in Warlords. Kil’jaeden’s Cunning became much stronger relative to other casters. We redesigned how the ability works to be more powerful in bursts instead of always affecting only some spells.

  • Kil’jaeden’s Cunning has been redesigned. Kil’jaeden’s Cunning calls upon the cunning of Kil’jaeden to permit movement while casting Warlock spells. This spell may be cast while casting other spells and lasts 15 seconds with a 2-minute cooldown.

Warrior

We wanted to fix a few problems with Warriors. Prominently, we still weren’t happy with Arms’ rotation (and neither were many players), so we’ve made some more changes. The goal is to remove needless complexity while simultaneously adding more depth. As mentioned in the above section on Ability Pruning, Overpower and Heroic Strike have been removed for Arms Warriors. In their place, Slam now costs less Rage, and Execute has been revised to provide more dynamic gameplay throughout the whole fight while still retaining its identity of a low-health finisher.

In addition, we weren’t satisfied with the Mastery for Arms. The intended flavor for Arms is about hitting with few, big, and heavy weapon strikes. Strikes of Opportunity actually went opposite of that, adding frequent little hits. We’ve replaced Strikes of Opportunity with a new Mastery which accentuates their intended design.

  • Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity has been removed, and replaced with a new ability, Mastery: Weapons Master.
    • Mastery: Weapons Master increases the damage of Colossus Smash, Slam, and Execute abilities by 20% (increasing with Mastery).
  • Executioner is a new passive ability for Arms Warriors.Colossus Smash no longer increases the damage of Slam.
    • Executioner causes the Warrior’s auto attack hits to generate an additional 40 Rage against targets with less than 20% health remaining. Additionally, the Execute ability no longer requires the target to be below 20% health to use, but its Rage cost is increased by 100%.
  • Mortal Strike now generates 20 Rage (up from 10 Rage).
  • Slam now costs 15 Rage (down from 25 Rage) and no longer has additional effects when Sweeping Strikes is active.

Fury Warriors received a few additional changes. We made a revision to the critical strike chance of Bloodthirst to make them less crit-dependant. A new glyph has been added which gives Fury Warriors a choice for a notably different playstyle. Auto attack damage had become too high, so we also moved some damage from that into Execute (which has been changed to deal damage based on Weapon Damage, instead of just Attack Power). Plus, we’ve updated some to spell alerts to improve usability.

  • Bloodthirst now has 30% additional Critical Strike chance (instead of double the normal Critical Strike chance).
  • Crazed Berserker no longer increases auto attack damage. Instead, it also causes Execute to hit with the off-hand weapon.
  • Glyph of Colossus Smash is a new glyph available to Fury Warriors. The glyph increases the duration of Colossus Smash’s effect to 20 seconds, but reduces its effectiveness.

(Source)

Some Takeaway

I bet your mouse 3 finger is sore by now from all that scrolling. If you managed to sit patiently through each line of updates, good on you! If not, you may be wondering what the highlights were. Because, you know, you totally didn’t lose interest, get sick of reading, or get distracted by whatever your cat is doing in that shoe box over there.

So, from the point-of-view of a Mage who scarcely plays outside of his class comfort zone, here’s probably the biggest gems this update:

  •  Bonus Armor, Mulistrike, and Readiness were finally added to the alpha. Blizzard seemed to have played around with other secondary stats on some trinkets in 5.4 content, but these are the ones that are officially making the cut in WoD.
  • Skill pruning seems be more than taking stuff away. Some skills, like Rune Strike, Pounce, and Malefic grasp have either had their benefits merged into other skills (simplification) or resulted in other skills having some sort of convenience or power buff. Additionally, some removals, like Distracting Shot, have been retained.
  • Hunters are getting some sort of raid utility ability.
  • Tanking appears to be getting simplified with changes to Riposte. Additionally, some tanking specs, like Brewmaster, seem to be getting some mechanic overhauls that make the job a little easier.
  • Balance Druids are being made more viable as a DPS spec. See the significant changes in the Druid section, including a new rotation and significant changes to existing skills.
  • The Seal improvements for Paladins have been largely revoked, although it’s unclear if they are only doing this until they come up with better changes.
  • Assassin Rogues had their weapon strictness reinstated.
  • Warlocks’ Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning has been buffnerfed. I seriously don’t know how else to describe this. The skill gets a lot of flack (from DPS trying to compete with Warlocks) and praise (from Warlocks), and prior changes in other patches have been…complicated. The new KJC retains the moveability aspect of the skill while making it more of a burst-usage ability.
  • Warriors are getting simplified. As a ranged player, it’s hard for me to comment on this area, but anybody reading over the notes will see the big chunks of red for Warriors. Some of the updates have focused on moving Warriors away from auto-attacking into something a little more exciting, some of it is adding spell alerts for playability, and there is, of course, a lot more.

If you’ve read this far, you’re my new favorite reader. For a complete list of the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor 6.0.0 changes currently in alpha, see Blizzard’s official blog post here. And stay tuned to BlizzPro as we bring you regular analysis, opinion, and content on the up-coming expansion.

 


Seth Harkins

PC gamer and lover of (most) things Blizzard. In his off time, he writes bad fan fiction, tends to his growing number of house plants, and enjoys a love-hate relationship with two cats.


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