wow Patch 7.2.5 Build 24271 - Class Changes

[Stan 5,240]

The latest 7.2.5 PTR build is tagged as Release, so Patch 7.2.5 could be out next week. Glory of the Tomb Raider now awards a pet. Many specializations received aura updates.

Achievements

• Fearless Elite
• Ferocious Combatant // Ferocious Combatant
• Glory of the Tomb Raider now rewards a pet Elayna (Micronax)
• Top Honors // Top Honors

Class Changes

Demon Hunter

• Item - Demon Hunter T20 Havoc 2P Bonus
• Item - Demon Hunter T20 Havoc 4P Bonus

Druid

Restoration Druid - Aura Update

• Shattered Fragments of Sindragosa > Shattered Fragments of Sindragosa
• Soul of the Forest

Monk

Mistweaver Monk - Aura Update

Paladin

• Scarlet Inquisitor's Expurgation > Scarlet Inquisitor's Expurgation

Priest

Discipline Priest // Holy Priest - Aura Updates

• Holy Nova
• Purge the Wicked
• Smite

Shaman

Restoration Shaman - Aura Update

• Earthquake
• Fury of Air
• Hailstorm
• Windstrike

Blizzard (Source)

Sorry for the confusion on this. The intended set of changes was:
1) Earth Shock buffed (didn't make into build, still planned)
2) Earthquake no longer scales with haste, but buffed to compensate.

Earthquake was double-dipping haste, because its damage per cast scales with haste and Maelstrom generation also scales with haste. That's not necessarily something that always needs an immediate fix, but when it encroaches so heavily on Earth Shock (let alone occasionally surpassing it), that's more of a problem. Trying to pull the two spells apart numerically could have delayed the problem a bit, but even the fact that they're close enough for this is to be an ongoing question is a red flag.

The size of the compensatory buff to Earthquake is open to adjustment if needed, and rigorous feedback on what's a reasonable amount of haste currently used on an "average" Earthquake can help there. It's inevitable that an Earthquake stacked with e.g. Bloodlust and Whispers in the Dark will go down in damage, but an unbuffed one should be able to come up slightly.

Warlock

• Nightfall
• Recurrent Ritual
• Soulshatter

Warrior

• Item - Warrior T19 Protection 2P Bonus
• Ignore Pain
• Indomitable

Misc Spells

Changed

• Bone Saw
• Deceiver's Veil
• Dream Lash
• Fel Infusion
• Fel Squall
• Illidan's Sightless Gaze
• Light Infusion
• Lingering Wail
• Rupturing Singularity
• Wailing Grasp

New

• Fel Blast
• Fragment Cosmetic Cover
• Erupting Essence
• Micronax
• Micronax Focus
• Micronax
• Nightstalker
• Unstable Soul

Strings

• BLIZZARD_STORE_VAS_ERROR_LAST_SAVE_TOO_DISTANT
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[Yridaa 490]

As for Earthquake: "We were not creative enough to both keep Earthquake valuable while not making Haste less useful, so instead - as we do most of the time, similar to the Aura's - we just do a quick and dirty edit and just hope for the best."

 

I don't even play a Shaman and it's still very sad to see them be so lazy in "fixing" things.

 

There are a ton of skills, abilities and mechanics that double dip with haste and its never an issue. For example, Crusade and Holy power both scale with haste, thus allowing Crusade to double dip from haste, making it the best talent in the tier. Yet Paladins almost never make top DPS in parses. So double-dipping is fine unless it makes the class OP in terms of damage. But Elemental Shaman was always somewhere in the middle even with the double-dip.

 

Blizzard is shifting the blame on Earthquake for making Earthshock weak in comparison. Why not introduce a passive that says "Every X sec, gain 5% increased damage to your next Earthshock, stacking up to 8 times. Affected by Haste." This way you add in a fun new mechanic to maximize stacks while still putting Earthquake in the rotation, while making Earthshock double dip from haste similar to how Earthquake does it. Or to make sure Haste doesn't become OP compared to other secondary stats, apply it to both Earthshock and Earthquake, but only at half the rate.

 

Voila, a fun mechanic that alters rotation, that's balanced and doesn't devalue Haste.

 

And all it took was 5 minutes of thought. Just nerf/buff the damage so it's in line with whatever Blizzard expects it to perform.

 

But no, they had to disable Haste for Earthquake and buff the damage by 30%, in turn devaluing haste and nerfing Ele Shammies' burst during BL and haste trinket procs. GJ Blizzard.

[Sikolik 5]

i m getting kinda sick that in every patch warlock is getting nerfed and nerfed and nerfed. idk why but can you pls give a buff to warlock. and not nerfs, because warlocks may be good in pvp and need to be nerfed doesn't mean the nerf should apply in PVE, i mean come on that is just lame. and if warlocks are OP(wich they aren't) then they are mostly 910+ and that is like 4% of the community so the rest is taking the blame aswell for the nerfs that apply to the highest skill lvl players. it's just not logic and doens't make any sense at all.

 

[Nightblad 6]

45 minutes ago, Sikolik said:

i m getting kinda sick that in every patch warlock is getting nerfed and nerfed and nerfed. idk why but can you pls give a buff to warlock. and not nerfs, because warlocks may be good in pvp and need to be nerfed doesn't mean the nerf should apply in PVE, i mean come on that is just lame. and if warlocks are OP(wich they aren't) then they are mostly 910+ and that is like 4% of the community so the rest is taking the blame aswell for the nerfs that apply to the highest skill lvl players. it's just not logic and doens't make any sense at all.

 

Yeah warlock are only the best dps on 6/10 boss in Nighthold, not op at all...

[Valks 2,375]

1 hour ago, Sikolik said:

i m getting kinda sick that in every patch warlock is getting nerfed and nerfed and nerfed. 

I'm gonna have to agree with Nightblad on this one - Warlocks are in the top 10 of nearly every single Mythic boss in Nighthold, and not just with one spec. Affliction and Destro are both there. Affliction is featured in 6 of the top 10 Mythic rankings for NH, while Destro is then featured in a 7th. 

[Maruken 31]

3 hours ago, Yridaa said:

Blizzard is shifting the blame on Earthquake for making Earthshock weak in comparison. Why not introduce a passive that says "Every X sec, gain 5% increased damage to your next Earthshock, stacking up to 8 times. Affected by Haste." This way you add in a fun new mechanic to maximize stacks while still putting Earthquake in the rotation, while making Earthshock double dip from haste similar to how Earthquake does it. Or to make sure Haste doesn't become OP compared to other secondary stats, apply it to both Earthshock and Earthquake, but only at half the rate.

This was a legitimate issue for us Elemental Shamans. With insane levels of Haste, Earthquake was going to overtake Earth Shock in the ST rotation, giving us another "meme build" (I hate that phrase). Blizzard did the right thing.

[Yridaa 490]

5 minutes ago, Maruken said:

This was a legitimate issue for us Elemental Shamans. With insane levels of Haste, Earthquake was going to overtake Earth Shock in the ST rotation, giving us another "meme build" (I hate that phrase). Blizzard did the right thing.

Why not just add a passive like I mentioned though? The way they did it, they just devalued Haste Rating. Even something super similar like "Earthquake causes your next Earth Shock to deal 30% more damage, stacking up to 3 times." or something similar. Extremely easy to implement, very straightforward, synergistic and doesn't devalue Haste.

[Sharknad0 67]

8 hours ago, Sikolik said:

i m getting kinda sick that in every patch warlock is getting nerfed and nerfed and nerfed. idk why but can you pls give a buff to warlock. and not nerfs, because warlocks may be good in pvp and need to be nerfed doesn't mean the nerf should apply in PVE, i mean come on that is just lame. and if warlocks are OP(wich they aren't) then they are mostly 910+ and that is like 4% of the community so the rest is taking the blame aswell for the nerfs that apply to the highest skill lvl players. it's just not logic and doens't make any sense at all.

 

No offense but, what rock did you crawl out of before posting this??? Warlocks are insanely OP right now. This is why they are constantly being nerfed. The numbers don't lie if you look at the charts. Every raid I have been in, this xpac, the locks are top 5, even when slightly under geared.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Sharknad0

[Valks 2,375]

7 hours ago, Yridaa said:

Why not just add a passive like I mentioned though? The way they did it, they just devalued Haste Rating. Even something super similar like "Earthquake causes your next Earth Shock to deal 30% more damage, stacking up to 3 times." or something similar. Extremely easy to implement, very straightforward, synergistic and doesn't devalue Haste.

Because outside of those windows where the damage ramped high enough, Earthquake could still be the best choice on ST. You don't want people to cast it on ST, just as you don't want a Mage to cast Flame Strike/Arcane Explosion on ST.

[Yridaa 490]

6 hours ago, Blainie said:

Because outside of those windows where the damage ramped high enough, Earthquake could still be the best choice on ST. You don't want people to cast it on ST, just as you don't want a Mage to cast Flame Strike/Arcane Explosion on ST.

Then just let Earthshock doubledip from haste as well. As it currently stands, people are expecting (On the blue post) that they'll just not cast earthquake anymore because it scales worth shit, making Chain lightning more valuable since that still scales with haste. Some of the early simcrafts (Not counting set bonuses, not sure if that matters, doesn't work properly yet in simcraft) show that EQ is no longer viable at 930+.

 

So this way, as it stands, they just made EQ obsolete both for ST and MT. "Congratulations, you played yourself" meme award goes to Blizzard for this one.

 

Edit: And it's not like Ele shammy will suddenly be top dps because of a change like this, I don't see why they're very careful about it and ruining it at the same time.

Edited June 8, 2017 by Yridaa

[Valks 2,375]

8 hours ago, Yridaa said:

Then just let Earthshock doubledip from haste as well. As it currently stands, people are expecting (On the blue post) that they'll just not cast earthquake anymore because it scales worth shit, making Chain lightning more valuable since that still scales with haste. Some of the early simcrafts (Not counting set bonuses, not sure if that matters, doesn't work properly yet in simcraft) show that EQ is no longer viable at 930+.

Personally, I think that if they're really struggling this much to make EQ not the best choice on ST, they should just add either an artifact trait or passive that enhances EQ on AoE situations. Nerf it for ST, make it do more damage depending on the number of targets hit with the first tick of it or something.

You are right in that they are doing the normal min-max nerf/buff thing where something is either best or absolutely dreadful.

[Syktris 36]

7 hours ago, Blainie said:

Personally, I think that if they're really struggling this much to make EQ not the best choice on ST, they should just add either an artifact trait or passive that enhances EQ on AoE situations. Nerf it for ST, make it do more damage depending on the number of targets hit with the first tick of it or something.

You are right in that they are doing the normal min-max nerf/buff thing where something is either best or absolutely dreadful.

I think they should put the same buff we had on WoD: EQ was a weak spell and if you hit Chain lightning in 3 or more mobs, EQ would get a buff and the spell would do 300% more damage.

I think it is the only way to make EQ only be viable in AoE situations.

[Valks 2,375]

13 hours ago, Syktris said:

I think they should put the same buff we had on WoD: EQ was a weak spell and if you hit Chain lightning in 3 or more mobs, EQ would get a buff and the spell would do 300% more damage.

I think it is the only way to make EQ only be viable in AoE situations.

There you go! Something like this that ensures a separation of ST/AoE, rather than mixing it into the ST rotation.

[Yridaa 490]

On 6/8/2017 at 8:54 PM, Syktris said:

I think they should put the same buff we had on WoD: EQ was a weak spell and if you hit Chain lightning in 3 or more mobs, EQ would get a buff and the spell would do 300% more damage.

I think it is the only way to make EQ only be viable in AoE situations.

I laud Blizzard for reworking classes and specs as they do with new expansions, but if part of the new system (in this case EQ) causes problems, they shouldn't fear going back to something that worked in the past. I didn't know that's how it worked in WoD (Again, I never mained a Shammy), but it seems to be excellent to just go back to something like that.

[Valks 2,375]

2 hours ago, Yridaa said:

I laud Blizzard for reworking classes and specs as they do with new expansions, but if part of the new system (in this case EQ) causes problems, they shouldn't fear going back to something that worked in the past. I didn't know that's how it worked in WoD (Again, I never mained a Shammy), but it seems to be excellent to just go back to something like that.

There does seem to be some kinda of stigma with this and, frankly, I don't know why. They tried something new, it didn't work as well - there should be no shame in implementing something that worked well previously. I guess it's because of admitting a wrong choice, but it could be a great solution here!