wow Class Tuning (Buffs) for October 2nd

[Starym 3,800]

 

There's more class tuning coming next week, as Unholy DKs, Feral Druids, Fire Mages, Shadow Priests, Ele and Enh Shamans and Demo Warlocks get some flat % as well as a few skill-specific buffs. It's tricky to decide who got the most out of it, but Shamans at least got 2 specs buffed.

October 2 (source)

We're working on some targeted spec tuning, which will go live with maintenance in each region starting on October 2. Here's where we currently are with that:
 

• Death Knight
  • Unholy
    • All damage (includes pets) increased by 4%.
• Druid
  • Feral
    • All damage increased by 4%.
• Mage
  • Fire
    • All damage increased by 5%.
• Priest
  • Shadow
    • Mind Flay damage increased by 10%.
    • Mind Sear damage increased by 15%.
• Shaman
  • Elemental
    • Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Earthquake damage increased by 15%.
  • Enhancement
    • All damage increased by 5%.
• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Shadow Bolt, Demonbolt, and Call Dreadstalkers damage increased by 15%.

As always, we'll have final values for you in a public hotfixes update when the changes go live next week.

[tkioz 229]

Most of these damage buffs, while welcome, aren't going to help those specs. A lot of the specs on the list (Fire Mage, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman) are simply broken in BFA due to the lack of secondary stats (which let's face it just walled papered over the issues they had in Legion) and/or removal of abilities from the artefact weapon.

They aren't Demo Lock, which is a fun engaging spec, that just lack raw output, they are instead clunky and unfun. I say this as someone who desperately wants to play Fire again as I loved it in Legion, but we lost so much with our weapon and the secondary stats just aren't there to make up for it, even if you stack everything, to make it fun again.

[blackstar128 30]

I hope this could make the demo lock good :)

i Love having an army of imps !!

[Prophet001 598]

2 hours ago, tkioz said:

Most of these damage buffs, while welcome, aren't going to help those specs. A lot of the specs on the list (Fire Mage, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman) are simply broken in BFA due to the lack of secondary stats (which let's face it just walled papered over the issues they had in Legion) and/or removal of abilities from the artefact weapon.

They aren't Demo Lock, which is a fun engaging spec, that just lack raw output, they are instead clunky and unfun. I say this as someone who desperately wants to play Fire again as I loved it in Legion, but we lost so much with our weapon and the secondary stats just aren't there to make up for it, even if you stack everything, to make it fun again.

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

[Rhondis 148]

1 hour ago, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

Yea, but that's Limit. How many fire mages do you see that is very well equipped as Limit's Fire Mage? I'm not trying to argue. But he is not wrong, Fire and many other specs are suffering majorly.

Honestly, I am just glad Demo is getting the buffs it deserves. 

[PikPikPanda 3]

1 hour ago, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

What the hell does that have to do with what he said,    hes not saying they don't do damage,   hes saying They arnt fun to play anymore.    You can give them a 100% buff to all ability damage, it wont change the fact that the specs are fundamentally broken,  Fire mages are about stringing together long chains of critical strikes,  And Shadow is about every increasing haste and being more and more hectic.    Wether or not Method has one on the team, doesn't answer if its fun or not

[tkioz 229]

2 hours ago, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

Just because there are people that can make a broken spec work at the very top end of the game doesn't make the spec any less broken or unfun to play compared to Legion. Limit was also running a Resto Shaman for some of their world firsts in Uldir and even Blizzard admit that spec is the weakest of the healers and needs work.

The raw numbers don't personally matter to me so long as the difference between the top and bottom isn't too large, what does matter is how fun it is to play, and right now playing Fire feels terrible.

[Fredward 0]

I think this is new territory for them as well as for us. Any changes are going to be small initially, I guess they'll want to see how the proposed changes affect overall balance before trying anything else.

 

[Evincare 39]

2 hours ago, tkioz said:

 

The raw numbers don't personally matter to me so long as the difference between the top and bottom isn't too large, what does matter is how fun it is to play, and right now playing Fire feels terrible.

I was going to lvl my mage next and I always liked blowing stuff up ? when you say feels terrible - is it a lack of crit and therefore just not enough Heating Ups? Which would translate into fireball spam... that would indeed be awful...

[Seksi 208]

These buffs are appreciated, we'll see if its enough in the near future as people get to play with the new tuning.

[Pregrowth 46]

buffing feral, do they even play the game?

[ResoWho 68]

7 hours ago, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

He played fire cause of his mobility if i remember right.

 

Currently with the stacked uldir buff im at ~45% crit, with buffs up in fight im able to reach ~53% crit (overall my pyro had a crit rate of ~60% and my fireball >50% in uldir).  At the beginning of the addon fire wasnt really fun to play cause the lack of crit really hits hard, while i gain more and more crit now i finally have fun playing my mage again seeing those sweet crit chains. I appreciate that 5% dmg increase.

 

Edited September 29, 2018 by ResoWho

[Xhopeon 50]

2 hours ago, Pregrowth said:

buffing feral, do they even play the game?

I've just started WoW, was Frost mage, but eventually decided for Feral and I do enjoy it, as well as all 7 others I saw ? 

We might be stubborn, but isn't it about playing for fun? 

 

EDIT: just realized your post can be taken other way, are you saying Ferals are good after recent buff or if Ferals even exist in game? 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Xhopeon

[tkioz 229]

5 hours ago, Evincare said:

I was going to lvl my mage next and I always liked blowing stuff up ? when you say feels terrible - is it a lack of crit and therefore just not enough Heating Ups? Which would translate into fireball spam... that would indeed be awful...

Pretty much, you can either stack haste and get your fireballs down to a smooth rotation, or you stack crit to get enough heating up procs to actually do damage, but not both, and even then you're lacking a few tools and passives that made things a lot more interesting.

Throw in the GCD changes, the lack of Phoenix Flames (same row as Flame On... Really Blizzard? Really?), and some other stuff it's just not fun. Even hitting an enemy in the face with an empowered Pryoblast doesn't feel fun, hell you can do that more often with Frost and Glacial Spike anyway.

[Brutalis 165]

16 hours ago, Starym said:

Druid

• Feral
  • All damage increased by 4%.

This is, what, the sixth time they’ve done this? The spec has had about a 30% increase in damage from all these hotfixes so far and it’s still bad. How did the spec make it to live when even such huge % buffs aren’t making it viable?

[Pregrowth 46]

6 hours ago, Brutalis said:

This is, what, the sixth time they’ve done this? The spec has had about a 30% increase in damage from all these hotfixes so far and it’s still bad. How did the spec make it to live when even such huge % buffs aren’t making it viable?

bad, when, how? have you played arena? lul

[Shadehallow 8]

20 hours ago, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

Should probably see how the G'huun encounter is done before saying stuff like this trying to invalidate someone's legitimate post...

[TheLucasJack 1]

5 hours ago, Pregrowth said:

bad, when, how? have you played arena? lul

I've recently leveled up a feral druid after playing my other two characters, a Tank warrior and an Elemental Shaman (Cries in weak classes) .

What I could see, the problem of feral druids is in PVE. The reason, I think, it's that it's too reliable on crits to make it work and with a 20% crit chance it's almost impossible to make it work. Without any crits having to spend: 

Rake - 35 energy
Moonfire - 30 energy
Thrash - 40 energy
Shred - 40 energy
Shred - 40 energy
Savage Roar - 30 energy

Total: 215 energy to ramp up.

Just to start our actual DPS on a boss is insanely bad as you still have to waste energy to maintain those debuffs and if you're out of luck, you can barely maintain Rip + Savage Roar if you count energy regeneration + gcd. If you don't want to go with savage roar for single target, too bad, the alternative is to go full Ferocious bite which is the biggest energy spender for feral.

 

Just to be clear, I'm not whining about this but only showing what the complain is probably about. 

[Brutalis 165]

12 hours ago, Pregrowth said:

bad, when, how? have you played arena? lul

Bad. Now. In every aspect of PvE. It’s a real shame they cannot balance the two endgame paths against one another, honour talents were meant to enable seperate balancing, but as it stands even if the spec is decent in PvP (which even then is debateable because their niche off-heals got nerfed to the ground) Feral is doing terribly in PvE and is in dire need of attention - which is why they are constantly buffing it’s numbers even when it’s clearly not enough.

[jinsu2301 273]

1 hour ago, Brutalis said:

Bad. Now. In every aspect of PvE. 

Now, I'm gonna be completely honest, I haven't played feral since raids opened (my guild has too many melees already) but strictly going by sims, my feral is neck and neck with my balance, and that is without the upcoming 4%. Also, looking at the few feral logs that are out here, in terms of DPS, the spec delivers. It is far from non-viable.

The true issue lies in that it's still awkward to play, due to overreliance on RNG with crits and freecasts, as well as Bloodtalons being mandatory but very punishing when not played correctly.

[Prophet001 598]

On 9/29/2018 at 5:03 AM, Evincare said:

I was going to lvl my mage next and I always liked blowing stuff up ? when you say feels terrible - is it a lack of crit and therefore just not enough Heating Ups? Which would translate into fireball spam... that would indeed be awful...

I love it personally.

It's the same as it was in Legion. I personally liked WoD fire where you built up huge ignites then combusted but that play style is gone.

One random person saying they don't "feel" like fire is "fun" is about the last thing you should listen to. Try it and if you like it then it's fun and if you don't then you don't but don't let other people drive you around and make that decision for you.

[Giftless 1]

On 9/29/2018 at 6:10 AM, Prophet001 said:

There was a fire mage on Limit's G'huun kill. What are you even saying?

Look if you don't know why they had one don't make uninformed comments like that.
Method also had a fire mage, but not for the overall dmg.

The real dps race on G'huun starts after 30%. As a fire mage you have an execute ability Scorch (if talented). Se the logic in having a fire mage now? Not to mention BL. Since no shaman spec was up to the task it was the best tactic for them at that time.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Giftless
typo

[Kozzie 1]

On 9/28/2018 at 8:35 PM, tkioz said:

Most of these damage buffs, while welcome, aren't going to help those specs. A lot of the specs on the list (Fire Mage, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman) are simply broken in BFA due to the lack of secondary stats (which let's face it just walled papered over the issues they had in Legion) and/or removal of abilities from the artefact weapon.

They aren't Demo Lock, which is a fun engaging spec, that just lack raw output, they are instead clunky and unfun. I say this as someone who desperately wants to play Fire again as I loved it in Legion, but we lost so much with our weapon and the secondary stats just aren't there to make up for it, even if you stack everything, to make it fun again.

This is about the dumbest comment about Fire Mages that I have seen since the start of BFA - 358 Fire Mage here and even without this incoming damage buff, have been in the top 3-5 in dps on most Uldir Heroic bosses.  This persons comments are a prime example of people that make wild statements with ZERO experience.  Intellect - Mastery - Versatility are the top three stats for a fire mage - then haste-crit.  So, my question to this person - Since you know so much - What number is a Fire Mage suppose to have?  What is a good number Mr. Expert?  Secondly, I've taken out several Frost Mages in our charts, while using all of my movement skills to soak during Vectis, or run the ball in G'hunn.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Kozzie

[Prophet001 598]

1 hour ago, Giftless said:

Look if you don't know why they had one don't make uninformed comments like that.
Method also had a fire mage, but not for the overall dmg.

The real dps race on G'huun starts after 30%. As a fire mage you have an execute ability Scorch (if talented). Se the logic in having a fire mage now? Not to mention BL. Since no shaman spec was up to the task it was the best tactic for them at that time.

I know that.

What's the point you're trying to make. They had arms stacked too for the same reason.

[Kozzie 1]

1 hour ago, Prophet001 said:

I love it personally.

It's the same as it was in Legion. I personally liked WoD fire where you built up huge ignites then combusted but that play style is gone.

One random person saying they don't "feel" like fire is "fun" is about the last thing you should listen to. Try it and if you like it then it's fun and if you don't then you don't but don't let other people drive you around and make that decision for you.

I'm thinking ol' Tkioz tried playing a Fire Mage and failed or didn't understand it and couldn't keep up with the demands of the rotation.  Probably a 1-2 button masher.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Kozzie