Blizzard is making good on its promise to keep delivering class tuning updates in this week’s World of Warcraft Midnight patch notes. Community Manager Randy ‘Kaivax’ Jordan made clear during the launch of WoW 12.1 that the balance team would be pushing regular “broad” changes for Curse of Ula’tek, with particular emphasis on the Coiled Isle and Venomous Abyss raid. Once again, the focus here is on helping out underperforming specs in PvE, while on the PvP side of things Blizzard is looking to speed up some “very long” combats. There’s also one change to bonus rolls you need to watch out for.
With the latest World of Warcraft Race to World First in its ultimate act – Echo and Liquid are now both tackling the final Mythic boss of Venomous Abyss as I write this – we could see a conclusion before these new balance changes hit the MMORPG. They’ll certainly come in handy for the rest of us, however, particularly if you’re using one of the classes that’s getting some aid. Community Manager Bethany ‘Linxy’ Hudson walks us through every important change; I’ll stick to the reliable alphabetical order to make finding things easy.
Before we get into all of those, however, let’s talk about bonus rolls. Community Manager Randy ‘Kaivax’ Jordan announced that Blizzard would be restricting bonus rolls so that they can only be used on an encounter where you’re eligible to receive loot. This means you cannot use them on subsequent attempts after a lockout. While this was scheduled to land as part of weekly maintenance, players are reporting that it’s already in effect, so keep that in mind when deciding where and when to spend your bonus rolls. Kaivax remarks that, while this is a change from Midnight Season 1, Blizzard feels it’s “healthier for the acquisition of loot overall.”
With that covered, let’s talk class-specific updates. Starting out with Death Knights, Blizzard wants to improve the performance of Frost specs when fighting just one or two targets. That means damage buffs to its melee output (10%), Obliterate (15%), Frost Strike (20%), and Howling Blast (15% against the main target).
Havoc Demon Hunters gain a 4% damage increase across the board, while Vengeance DH is “performing below expectations defensively,” so its mitigation tools are being boosted. The damage reduction of Demonic Wards goes up from 12% to 15%, Void Reaver now increases the effect of Frailty by 6% instead of 5%, and Fel Devastation’s healing has been increased by 25%.
All Druids get a 10% buff to Shred damage, with Balance Druids gaining 4% damage on all abilities, and Restoration a 4% boost to all healing output. Feral “is performing below expectations, particularly in raid encounters,” so it gets a 5% increase to all ability damage in PvE along with 10% on auto-attacks and 10% on Ferocious Bite, in an attempt to help it deal with single-target situations better.
Both BM and Survival Hunters are handed a class-wide 7% damage increase for both the Hunter and their pets, although for Survival specifically this is lowered to just 3% in PvP. Fire Mages gain 3% ability damage across the board (but not in PvP), while Frost Mages get a bigger 6% boost to all ability damage in all situations.
Mistweaver Monks are currently behind the curve in healing, so they get a 5% increase to all their healing dealt, and the proc chance of the four-piece set bonus from Guile of the Monkey King has been raised from 20% to 25%. Windwalker Monks, meanwhile, gain 4% increased ability damage across the board in PvE.
Blizzard notes Protection Paladins are struggling to keep up with the damage output of their fellow tanks, “especially in dungeons.” To fix this, they gain a massive 150% damage boost to Blaze of Glory, along with hefty 30% increases for the output of Consecration and Divine Guidance. Last on the list for PvE, Discipline Priests have the mana cost of Shadow Mend reduced by 20%; a smaller change, but still significant.
Blizzard also has a long list of changes for the competitive PvP side of Curse of Ula’tek. “Healers are able to top off targets too quickly in PvP, resulting in very long combat times,” it notes. As such, the primary stat on the PvP trinket set bonus is being lowered for all healer specs. Alongside this comes a much wider range of class-specific adjustments, so be sure to dig through those if you’re planning to put your player-battling skills to the test.
This World of Warcraft Midnight class tuning update will go live with the scheduled weekly maintenance update on Tuesday September 1. You’ve still got a couple of days to think about where you’re going to invest your time, then. Be sure to keep the new bonus roll rules in mind as well, because you’ll no longer be able to save them for later and see what else you get from all the encounters before making a decision.
