4.2 on the PTR already???
7:19 AM
Yes, that's right, but it will be a few days before the PTR actually goes up. Blizzard is at a point where they realize the colossal fuckup that was 4.1 can only be overshadowed by a new content patch, a new arena season, and new chances to commit various new colossal fuckups. Touching briefly on the announced changes, there is simply not a lot to discuss, but what few changes were announced are actually somewhat interesting.
* Druids will now only gain 1 AP per 1 STR, but will continue to gain 2 AP per 1 AGI.
This doesn't really surprise me; we were double-dipping for a while on buffs like MotW and Horn of Winter. Oh well, I never ran with anyone who could provide those buffs, so it means very little to me.
* Entangling Roots and Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.
Duh, this has been something that I have been suggesting since TBC. Finally, Blizzard has left Entangling Roots as a CC ability. Now, if only dispels cost mana and were a choice instead of something mindlessly spammed...
* Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
Hmmmm, this MIGHT be a decent little buff for Feral utility. At the moment, my Innervate returns 20% of my ~24k mana, which is ~4800 mana returned. I still use it basically on cooldown on Guntir (when I have a free GCD or two) because free mana is free mana. This change means that Guntir's ~110k mana would regenerate roughly 5500 mana. Well, that's not MUCH of an improvement, but it is an improvement.
* Ring of Frost now has a 1.5-second cast time.
DOOF... now there's a nerf to the Mage class. This will likely be met with tumultuous applause from everyone but Mages, and the river of tears from them will be amazingly clear, crisp, and cool. Essentially, this completely forces the DeepRing techniques used currently (Deep Freezing and placing a RoF on the ground under them) to actually land a RoF. Frankly, I think that this change will make Mages use Deep Freeze to try and bait out trinkets by Deep'ing the target, fake-casting RoF, and expecting that the target will trinket the DF to have enough time to avoid the RoF. Maybe this will not happen... hard to tell. Definitely an interesting change and a very interesting way of nerfing Frost Mages (the sad thing is that this will make RLS that much more dominant).
* Overpower now has a 1.5-second cooldown and global cooldown (Taste for Blood's Overpower cooldown has not changed).
This is just a nice little nerf for Warriors. Currently, Overpower causes a 0.5s CD and GCD and allows Warriors to burst rather hard with it. Now, I know that most will tell me I am crazy for suggesting that a 1.0s difference will not be the end of the world, but let me tell you - dropping a 24k MS 0.5s after a 20k Overpower ROUGHLY translates to a 44k GCD... spreading those out EVEN A LITTLE will make a big difference in the long run (especially when it comes to every 5s via Taste for Blood).
* Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer have stance requirements.
These just make sense... Survival Instincts does not require Bear Form, so Blizzard is removing that requirement from Warriors. To be completely honest, I did not know that Retaliation and Recklessness had stance requirements since I think they are both usable from Battle or Fury. Oh well, this just means that Warriors might hit Shield Wall in Battle Stance and NOT get that free 10% damage reduction from Defensive Stance... no skin off my nose.
No word yet on whether Stampeding Roar has yet been fixed on Live (it will consume between 30 and 60 energy depending on how much you have when you use it... gfg Blizztards).
May 3, 2011 at 11:42 AM
much more exciting, is that the str change feels *very* likely to be a precursor to a feral pve dps scaling evaluation, which ultimately will lead to feral dps buffs.
hopefully.
haha.
and ya, the 3 major warrior CDs are tied to stances. shield wall in def, retal in battle, and reck in 'zerk. this change is going to break my sweet macro on my alt!
it's actually a pretty big buff to warriors imo, not so much on the shield wall side (as they want def stance for 10% mitigtion), but it means they can reck without stance dancing at all.
the nerf to overpower GCD is good. it + heroic strikes are a big part of the ludicrous burst warriors are capable of.
also: our poor balance brethren. they have 1 viable role in arena and it's getting gutted.
May 3, 2011 at 12:15 PM
In all honesty, I haven't looked at Balance since they nerfed Mushrooms from 70% to 50% on the Beta... I liked playing Balance as an alt-spec at the end of S8 (lawl, wizcleave-days ftw) and we got up to basically 2300 mmr (not to shabby). There was something about the change to Eclipse+Power = sustained nerf but burst buff??? I really cannot comment... I don't pretend to understand how the balance bar works.
Warriors getting Recklessness in Battle Stance, to me, sounds like an incoming DD-nerf... but who knows. Can they pop Recklessness and then swap back to Battle without losing it??? I certainly don't know, but I assume that's the case. Just seems like a quality of life change... hopefully they nerf some stuff on warriors soon... Charge becoming a physical root effect like FCB would be a HUGE change that needs to happen IMO; they stunlock harder than Rogues atm.
As for your suggestion that the STR change may be a "very likely precursor to a feral pve dps scaling evaluation"... I'm not holding my breath. Something tells me that one of the Devs has a guild mate who plays Feral who said something like "man, Horn of Winter gives me SOOOO much AP," and the dev inquired further as to what he was talking about. Then the dev realized what was happening and decided it needed "fixing" and that would be the end of it.
May 4, 2011 at 11:06 AM
the balance nerf just means that they can't sit in a solar eclipse and spam sunfire / swarm indefinitely with the eclipse bonus.
it's a pretty hefty nerf to LSD2.0, but actually a buff for most other boomkin comps as they'll get to the various eclipse states much faster.
it's a pretty big pve aoe nerf too, but that probably doesn't matter to you.
the reck change means no stance dancing, which effectively means more rage avail when a warrior recks. right now, they have to bounce to 'zerker, pop reck, and go back (for overpower). given most warriors only have 1pt in tact mastery this means they are capped at 50 rage post stance swap. they can use other CDs (inner rage) to mitigate this however.
feral is low end in pve dps. i *highly* doubt this nerf (which is ~1k ap in a pve raid situation) will go live without other compensation. but who knows these days.