- Author: Passion
- Date: December 12, 2023
- Updated: December 12, 2023
- Expansion: WoW Classic
Another round of class tuning, this time focusing heavily on buffs, with a few notable fixes thrown in the mix.
The Starsurge Rune for Druids has received huge numbers changes. The damage is being increased by a whopping 182%, while the cooldown is being lowered to 6 seconds from 10 seconds, and the mana cost is being brought down to a dirt cheap 1% base mana. Hopefully this is enough to bring Starsurge up to par with the other Runes available, but time will tell.
Hunters have mostly received fixes for Flanking Strike, making it now act appropriately. Rogues have also had some fixes, and now Remorseless Attacks should be appropriately consumed by Rune abilities.
Priests have received several changes, though while the numbers are very high, these changes do not seem sufficient enough to bring Priest DPS in line with other classes. Void Plague has had its damage increased by 200%, and Homunculi damage has been increased by 100%. Twisted Faith will now also provide a 50% damage increase instead of 20%.
Shaman DPS have also received a few positive changes, Lava Lash has had its damage increased from 100% to 150%, as well as its mana cost reduced to 1% base mana. Overload now has a 50% chance to trigger, up from 33%, and Dual Wield Specialization now increases your chance to hit by 10%.
Finally, Boon of Blackfathom has been adjusted to provide Spell Hit instead of Spell Crit.
It has also been touched on that Hunter pets will be tweaked, as they are currently still too strong.
Tomorrow, with scheduled weekly maintenance in each region, we’re going to implement some adjustments based on class performance and feedback.
Season of Discovery
- Druid
- Starsurge rune ability damage increased 182%.
- Starsurge cooldown reduced to 6 seconds (was 10 seconds).
- Starsurge mana cost reduced to 1% of base mana (was 3% of base mana).
- Hunter
- Flanking Strike now gains the benefit of weapon enhancements like sharpening stones, is now on global cooldown, and is now properly treated as a melee attack, letting it benefit from attack power and combat modifiers to dodge, parry, block, crit, hit, etc.
- Flanking Strike is now prevented by Pacify.
- Flanking Strike now requires a weapon equipped.
- Flanking Strike pet damage is now properly treated as a melee attack, with same benefits as listed above for the hunter’s damage.
- Additional changes to normalize Hunter pet performance are still to be determined.
- Priest
- Priest Homunculi damage increased by 100%.
- Void Plague damage increased by 200%.
- Twisted Faith now increases damage done by Mind Blast and Mind Flay by 50% (was 20%) on targets afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
- Rogue
- Saber Slash, Shiv, and Main Gauche will now properly consume Remorseless Attacks.
- Saber Slash’s tooltip fixed; damage not reduced.
- Saber Slash damage is now properly considered a Bleed and benefits from the Mangle debuff. Note: Bleed-immune creatures will no longer be affected by it.
- Shaman
- Lava Lash damage increased to 150% weapon damage (was 100% weapon damage).
- Lava Lash mana cost reduced to 1% of base mana (was 4%).
- Overload now has a 50% chance to trigger (was 33%).
- Dual Wield Specialization now grants 10% increased chance to hit while dual-wielding.
- Boon of Blackfathom world buff adjusted. It now provides 3% spell hit and 25 spell power buff addition to the other physical damage and movement speed effects (was spell crit).
- Developers notes: Spellcasters in general are struggling a bit in BFD, mostly due to poor scaling without spellpower and a higher requirement of spell hit to reliably hit creatures 2+ levels above the caster. Keep those Chronoboons handy and don’t stand in the fire and lose your buff!
Regarding the Hunter pet performance note above, we will let you know as soon as we’ve finalized this hotfix. We really like hunter pets being able to occasionally do some raid or dungeon tanking, but it was never intended for them to be the best tanks in the game.
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