Ce site requiert JavaScript pour fonctionner.
Veuillez activer JavaScript dans votre navigateur.
Melee DPS Class Writers Opinions on Class Tuning Changes on the 9.0.5 PTR
RPT
Publié
01/03/2021 à 15:45
par
Anshlun
Today we've asked our Melee DPS Class Writers for their thoughts on the recent class changes added to Patch 9.0.5 PTR. For this post, we are covering the changes present in latest two PTR builds, Build 37623, from February 17th, and Build 37705, from February 24th.
It is important to remember that content on the PTR is not final and Blizzard will likely change classes more as PTR builds go by.
February 17th BuildFebruary 24th Build
Unholy Death Knight Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Traînard réanimé
and
Peuromones
buffed
Unholy DK Guide
Unholy hasn't seen many changes in the latest PTR builds. The
Traînard réanimé
legendary was buffed both in terms of damage and proc rate. It now deals 5% more damage and procs 17% more often. This is quite significant but I still don't see this legendary being the best choice in Mythic +. As I've said elsewhere, the fact that you cannot control when it procs is a large negative.
Peuromones
got buffed from 7.5 to 10%. This is nice for all DK specs since it's such a versatile legendary for all the three specs. For those of you that do tend to offspec plenty, you now have an even better option for any scenario! It still won't be best for any given spec though, but I do think that's okay.
Havoc Demon Hunter Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Chaos délié
buffed
Blessure brûlante
and
Faveur de Regard-noir
buffed
Havoc DH Guide
Couple of changes in the past two weeks for Havoc on PTR. First of all, talent change.
Chaos délié
got buffed... it's a buff to our AoE damage which was already in a good place. For purely M+ havoc DH this will be a nice damage to overall damage assuming all you care about is AoE and boss damage is irrelevant but raiding DH will remain similar to the way they are now.
Second, legendaries.
Faveur de Regard-noir
was buffed to 40% along with the fury cost of eye beam being refunded on proc. This is a nice change that will certainly help make this legendary more competitive and the refund is extremely welcome as chaining procs will occur more often now.
Blessure brûlante
got buffed significantly as well. This buff will make this legendary power very competitive in ST and AoE as well. In cleave it promotes a weird playstyle of "multidotting" by making sure you Demon's Bite every target in range to spread the dot but outside of this small annoyance this legendary buff looks promising for M+ and Raiding DH.
Feral Druid Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Bibelot œil-de-chat
and
Bague de rage
buffed
Feral Druid Guide
In the last couple of PTR builds there's been a couple of changes targeting feral legendaries. Both of these changes affect legendaries that are relatively underused,
Bibelot œil-de-chat
and
Bague de rage
.
Bibelot œil-de-chat
is a bit of a bizzare situation and i'm not exactly sure what blizzard are thinking about with these changes. So firstly
Bibelot œil-de-chat
is a reasonably usable legendary in it's current iteration at 25% energy refund. It sits solidly in the "not-draught but ok" section of legendaries along with
Cycle de la vie et la mort
and
Appétit du prédateur dominant
but without the niche benefits that the other two legendaries bring so maybe a buff is indeed justified. The initial change brought it to 35% energy refund which to be clear is an incredibly minor buff, it's about 3 shreds across a whole 5 minute fight, not a whole lot right, but then it was reduced further down to 30%, so this buff kind of doesn't really change anything at all. I assume it's targeted as a placebo buff because i'm not really sure what else it accomplices.
Bague de rage
got fairly significant buffs, with a 50% buff to both the cooldown reduction AND the generator damage. The cooldown reduction while a nice buff is still incredibly minor and remains heavily dependent on fight times for effectiveness, it's not quite enough to sync
Berserk
and
Convoquer les esprits
and in the case whereby this legendary hits its niche (which would be requiring heavy burst in windows (say sludgefist)) it's more likely to do nothing and desync your
Berserk
due to how minor the CDR is. The bleed buff is very nice and hits the niche of what this legendary should be targeting well, if blizzard were to do further looks at these changes this is really where it should be targeted. This buff does actually move the legendary up into the "not-draught but ok" section of legendaries and potentially gives it some decent value in M+
Windwalker Monk Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Tenue de combat de Xuen
reworked
Windwalker Monk Guide
As of writing this, the only documented changes for Windwalker on PTR have been the buffs to the
Tenue de combat de Xuen
legendary. The Critical Strike chance for
Coup de pied du soleil levant
that comes after
Poings de fureur
stop channeling has been increased to 50% from 30% and the cooldown reduction provided from
Coup de pied du soleil levant
crits has been increased to 5 seconds from 2.5. These are strong buffs for a legendary that many in the community, myself included, would love to see brought into prominence as it brings back the fan favorite playstyle of Tomb of Sargeras. Unfortunately, with the strength of
Délice de l’invocateur
, the Kyrian covenant, and 2 minute cooldowns; even with the buffs,
Tenue de combat de Xuen
is resigned to a 2nd place finish in the race for strongest legendaries.
However, recently we have found some undocumented changes to Windwalker that merit some comments.
The first is that on the PTR,
Marque de la grue
stacks should now correctly appear and disappear as targets do, no more persisting after a target dies or getting extra from
Tempête, Terre et Feu
. We
talked about this "bug" on PeakofSerenity.com
. While its good to see bugs fixed, this is one that many Windwalkers enjoyed and felt that it made the spec slightly easier to play and maintain, since it is toward the higher end of complexity. It will be a nerf to AOE DPS in situations where the Windwalker was able to maintain more stacks than there were targets, but how much will depend on the situation and the difference in stacks and targets.
Next Blizzard appears to have "fixed" the interaction that allowed
Tempête, Terre et Feu
spirits to continue to channel
Poings de fureur
even while you, and they, cast other abilities. This enabled Windwalkers to, with
Tempête, Terre et Feu
out, "clip" their own cast and cast other abilities, while your clones would still do it for you and copy your new abilities. We
talked about this on PeakofSerenity.com as well
. Numerically this won't result in a large change in our DPS, but it will change the fact that up til this point, Windwalkers clipped their
Poings de fureur
casts during
Armes de l’Ordre
in order to take advantage of this interaction. The biggest effect this change will have is in PvP where it will dramatically lower a Windwalker's burst potential. Similar to the above, while bugs being fixed is a good thing, this will feel rather awful to change how we've come to use
Armes de l’Ordre
and will take away a chunk of Windwalker's burst abilities in a PvP meta that seems entirely predicated on your ability to annihilate your opponent in a scant few seconds.
Lastly, Blizzard seems to have enabled
Œil du tigre
to do extra damage when
Tempête, Terre et Feu
is out to adjust for your reduced damage. This is a positive change that won't change things noticeably, but is nice nonetheless.
Unfortunately with the "bug fixes" listed above, and very predictably any time fixes are made to
Tempête, Terre et Feu
, new bugs have also been introduced. Currently we know of 3:
Mark of the Crane capped at 5. It had been capped at 6, and the tooltip says 6, so we're unsure if this is intentional or not.
Clones regularly not casting
Coup de pied du soleil levant
and
Poings de fureur
. We believe this is due to an unexplained removal of the clone's interactions with haste and cooldown reduction, as it seems their cooldowns for abilities are now unlinked from yours. So if you are able to cast RSK or FoF earlier due to haste or another cooldown reduction like from
Frappe du voile noir
, your SEF clones may not cast it. This is almost certainly unintended and will hopefully be fixed shortly. It does render combining
Armes de l’Ordre
and SEF completely detrimental as you just increase the cooldown reduction that causes the problem.
Clones consistently not casting
Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant
. We're not sure why this is happening, but it doesn't seem to be the same root cause as the above problem with them not casting RSK and FoF. We assume this is unintended and will be fixed.
Cooldown reduction from
Frappe du voile noir
seems to no longer work during
. Not sure why this happens, but it will hurt
as a fallback option should SEF remain a disaster.
With more bugs introduced Windwalker's future is uncertain. If these bugs go live then it will render two of Windwalker's biggest cooldowns severely problematic and may shake up what covenant and talents we use. However, in the (hopefully) likely event that these new bugs are fixed and (less likely) no new ones are added, Windwalker should only see a very small reduction in damage in single target PvE, a small to moderate reduction in PvE AOE (depending on targets and stacks), and a sizable reduction in PvP burst.
Retribution Paladin Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Impulsion de l’avant-garde
and
Aube et crépuscule
buffed
Verdict final
buffed
Retribution Paladin Guide
Over the last few weeks we've seen a series of buffs to some of the less popular Legendaries.
Impulsion de l’avant-garde
has had its duration and Holy damage buff slightly increased, and
Aube et crépuscule
has also had its duration buffed as well. These are relatively small buffs to each of them, but neither of them were that far behind to begin with so they'll end up basically on par with Legendaries like
Inquisiteur implacable
or
Jugement du magistrat
for non Venthyr covenants.
Verdict final
has also had a substantial buff, as it now also does about 15% more damage than
Verdict du templier
. This is a huge single target buff, and assuming nothing else changes
Verdict final
will certainly be the best Legendary for single target for non Venthyr by a large margin.
There's also been another less visible change with the Kyrian conduit,
Clarté retentissante
. Although it's finally had its tooltip updated, it now just describes how the conduit had always worked since launch - the more important change is that each proc now comes with a small time delay of about 0.7 seconds between them instead of all at once. This can't really be described as only a buff or a nerf, but this new behavior does have some positive impacts: if you use Divine Toll at 2 or more Holy Power and get very lucky with procs then you now have an opportunity to spend Holy Power between procs to prevent overcapping, and you now have a chance to proc
Jugement du magistrat
off of every extra Judgment, since its ICD is 0.5s and the procs will happen at a slightly longer interval than that.
Rogue Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Venthyr Covenant Ability
Flagellation
Reworked
Lame-du-destin
,
Écusson de Marchesoir
,
Osier de Vertepeau
,
Charme fourbe
,
Les putrides
,
Ombres mortelles
, and
Minuscule lame toxique
buffed
Tromblon caché
buffed
Blessures venimeuses
buffed to give 8 Energy when procced (up from 7 Energy).
Assassination Rogue GuideOutlaw Rogue GuideSubtlety Rogue Guide
Generally speaking, Rogues don't really get many changes in 9.0.5. Most of it is just a round of tuning up a number of legendaries that were behind. To what extent that affects the legendary meta and gearing will show as the patch notes and tuning finalize further down the road. I don't think there's a need to comment on that here.
Flagellation
However, there are some noteworthy changes.
Flagellation
, the Venthyr covenant ability, has been reworked. While not necessarily being bad before, it had some uncomfortable quirks with having to use it twice (with a GCD) before. Also, its damage and buff windows were not always very transparent. The new version looks much stronger now. It is now a one-time use ability that deals a noteworthy amount of initial damage. For every finisher, it now lashes once with the damage multiplied by the number of combo points spent instead of scheduling a series of timed small lashes. Haste is stacking up immediately with each finisher. This window lasts for 12s, after which the Haste buff simply persists for another 12s. If the target dies early, it currently seems to compensate by granting 10 free stacks and persisting the buff immediately. The
Marques de fouet
conduit now simply adds a pseudo lash as if you spent 4 combo points right after the initial use. It also increases ALL Flagellation damage by quite a lot.
As of right now, Venthyr is looking to be quite strong with these changes. Flagellation is (looking at the ability only) the strongest covenant ability. Lashing Scars easily beats all other Rogue conduits (except Outlaw's very strong
Calcul des probabilités
). Quite possible further tuning will apply here but looking at the whole package with legendaries and soulbinds, Venthyr will join or even pass the current numerical top covenants on single target.
Flagellation is still not free of quirks. The 12s lash window is rather short and, while strong for every spec, an Assassination Rogue gets fewer finishers in that time frame than a Sub Rogue. This does not have to make it numerically bad, but it can feel pretty weird in direct gameplay comparisons. Also, the nature of the Haste buff usually loses some value in AoE situations. It's nice to have Flagellation provide some more noticeable priority target damage in 9.0.5 though.
Assassination
Other than the Venthyr changes, there are adjustments to Assassination's energy flow. Very much to my surprise the spec-specific energy regeneration Rank 2 of
Débiter
was removed. As compensation, the energy gains from
Blessures venimeuses
were increased by 1. This should make the change numerically somewhat neutral or positive but I don't quite understand why this is necessary. Rogue TCs have been advocating for energy regeneration on Slice and Dice a lot during Alpha and Beta because the buff has so little synergy for the slow-paced Assassination compared to Outlaw or Sub, both of which have snyergizing passives giving them more energy. I don't quite see why this bonus has to be removed from Assassination again - it makes Slice and Dice rather dull and uninteresting once more. As a new rank 2, the spec gets
Tailler dans le vif
. This is a neat Quality of Life effect so there is less requirement to manually maintain this dull maintenance buff... but why make it dull in the first place? If the thought is that maintaining Slice and Dice as Assassination should not be core gameplay, then you might as well remove it entirely. (This is just my opinion though, I know people are somewhat split on the concept of SnD for Assassination.)
Bugfixes
On a more positive note, Rogues finally do get a number of more bugfixes. Just to mention a selection: That
Poisons améliorés
rank 2 that was added to Assassination in Shadowlands Alpha - the one that never worked for the entirety of Alpha, Beta, and SL launch - the one you unlocked while leveling to 60 - it's finally working.
Réprimande retentissante
from stealth does not apply
Découverte des faiblesses
on all specs anymore (an exploit that was excluded by Warcraft Logs).
Tempête cramoisie
now stacks
Empressement
.
Pointe d’os dentelée
is affected by the Assassination mastery.
Calcul des probabilités
buffs are not discarded when re-rolling. I am happy to see things like this addressed. I'm hopeful we'll see some more quirks and bugs, both old and new, fixed as the development cycle for 9.0.5 continues.
That was pretty much all for Rogue changes on the PTR. Overall, as an outlook on the patch for PvE content, I am slightly disappointed that we didn't see more spec-specific tuning yet. All Rogue specs are not very popular top picks in the current meta. Castle Nathria was the first raid in a long while where we did not see a single rogue during the world first race. This is quite surprising for a pure DPS class.
Within the class, Outlaw is doing very well with good single target damage and strong AoE. First preview sims of 9.0.5 indicate that Assassination may become the best single target spec while also having fair melee DoT-cleave. This leaves Sub with the concerns of treading down the same road it was on during Battle for Azeroth: no changes and falling behind more and more without having a well-defined thing they excel at.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound whiney about spec balance and there will always be a meta. However, I wish Blizzard would look more into continuous balancing and locating where issues lie. The Sub and Outlaw Rogue spec auras were not touched since 8.1 in 2018! There was no tuning (aside from legendaries or conduits) for the entirety of Shadowlands Alpha, Beta, and 9.0 release. In other words, Rogue balancing feels like things just happen by random chance and the reason Sub started out fairly well (compared to BfA) in Shadowlands was pure luck from the few changes they made to spec gameplay. I miss some active balancing. With more active balancing and tuning, "scaling" wouldn't have to be such a buzzword in the community and the Warcraft Logs statistics wouldn't be spanning such a big range.
Enhancement Shaman Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Fouet de lave
buffed
Gardien des tempêtes
buffed
Héritage de la sorcière du givre
buffed
Enhancement Shaman Guide
While on the surface the
Fouet de lave
buff looks like a small change to something that's just rotational filler, the number of hooks it has in the kit means this has a solid chance of altering the options we have. Between
Poing de magma
,
Main brûlante
and
Esprits élémentaires
'
Arme en fusion
, this has a real chance of opening up fire based builds with both
Catalyseurs de lave primordiale
and
Os de loup de féticheur
due to how big of a base buff the ability received. It is however, very firmly still in the camp of a specialized damage profile so may end up being a niche option to dethrone
Vents funestes
on some encounters.
Héritage de la sorcière du givre
changes are mostly just offset by the loss of globals to make use of the
Fouet de lave
buff, so while it's nice, it's doubtful it's going to actually change anything with regards to its usability.
Gardien des tempêtes
's changes comes as a nice surprise to finally cement it as a good option as an AoE alternative on an AoE focused row, but more oriented around cleave. It also allows for it to improve our single target rotation without a complete reliance on
Fracture
. Unfortunately the most recent build removed the extraneous
Arme du Maelström
scalling when consuming charges with stacks present, so whether this talent even sees play with that factor is unknown but at least has potential compared to the current tuning.
As an extra note - there is a 35% buff to the base damage of
Chaîne d’éclairs
that wasn't caught in the original datamining, and only recently became active on the PTR. This ups the damage of our
Arme du Maelström
spenders in AoE making it firmly the best option at two targets, upping the AoE value of Maelstrom stacks where we are usually flooded, and also aligns with the
Gardien des tempêtes
buff to improve it further. Overall welcome change given that it's ever present in our AoE rotation due to the cooldown recduction provided to
Impact foudroyant
.
Arms Warrior Review of PTR Changes
Changes Highlights
Seigneur de bataille
,
Frappe persistante
,
Exploiteur
,
Cadence de Fujieda
,
Défense téméraire
,
Volonté du berserker
,
Représailles
,
Volonté inflexible
, and
Réverbération sismique
buffed
Arms Warrior Guide
The legendary tuning on the 9.0.5 PTR are all good mechanical changes, which make them *better*, but not really good enough to promote them over the same legendaries we've been using so far.
Exploiteur
's
Frappe mortelle
damage buff being doubled in value looks quite appealing, although it's actual value is somewhat obfuscasted. While you would think it would be incredibly strong for Venthyr, there is a hidden modifier which reduces the effect when used with
Blâme
, effectively balancing out the opportunity to buff
Frappe mortelle
more often by casting
Blâme
than with
Exécution
. Because this hidden modifier was also doubled, it means that
Exploiteur
went from +25% for
Exécution
and +18% for
Blâme
, to +50% for
Exécution
and +36% for
Blâme
in 9.0.5. This means it's still a large buff (+100%), but
Exploiteur
might not be giving you quite as much as you'd expect. Regardless, it's not very good in PvE, but is becoming surprisingly strong in PvP (for all Covenants) due to the added burst pressure. This represents a pretty clear example of where a specific PvP modifier would be useful, as to buff it to the point of being strong in PvE would leave it ludicriously powerful in PvP.
Frappe persistante
is the star of the show, nearly doubling the chance to proc and extending the effect, although surprisingly only for non-Venthyr. Because
Blâme
's strength so completely outweighs
Frappe mortelle
, Venthyr won't get much value from this legendary (because the value of the buff is compared against the opportunity cost of casting
Blâme
less), but other Covenants make out very well - there's much less of a power difference between
Frappe mortelle
and
Exécution
, so a Night Fae or Kyrian will find this legendary much stronger than before, even competing with
Déchaînement
which was the previous front-runner for them.
-
Chevalière des rois tourmentés
with Ravager talented is still the best option for Venthyr, while
Frappe persistante
is pulling ahead for other covenants.
Fury Warrior Review of PTR Changes
Fury Warrior Guide
The legendary tuning on the 9.0.5 PTR are all good mechanical changes, which make them *better*, but not really good enough to promote them over the same legendaries we've been using so far.
For Fury Warriors, extending the duration of
Volonté du berserker
&
Cadence de Fujieda
buffs are great changes which should have been made before launch, but while it makes them easier to maintain, it's but still not worth the hassle of actually doing so while also obeying encounter mechanics - invariably the buffs are going to fall off mid-combat, which results what is already a medicore legendary performing even worse. The real issue here is one of design - something that has a chance to fail invariably will fail at some point, and unless it's strong enough to compensate for that loss, it's going to have a hard time being competitive.
Défense téméraire
no longer being dependent on critical strikes is another good design change, but because the amount of cooldown reduction per proc has been lowered it's actually not that much of a buff and in some edge cases can even result in a nerf. Essentially, if
Saccager
was critting more than 33% of the time, you would average more cooldown reduction than before, and while Fury doesn't stack that much crit, it's still only a minor buff which doesn't really move it out of mediocrity. The real problem here is that the legendary has a defensive bonus alongside the offensive one - so long as it also reduces the cooldown of
Régénération enragée
, it's extremely unlikely that it will ever be buffed to the point of seriously competing with DPS-only legendaries.
-
Chevalière des rois tourmentés
with Bladestorm talented is still the best legendary for all covenants, with Deathmaker close behind.
You can see how values for all class abilities have changed from Shadowlands 9.0 to the latest 9.0.5 PTR build in this series of guides:
Death Knight Class Changes
Demon Hunter Class Changes
Druid Class Changes
Hunter Class Changes
Mage Class Changes
Monk Class Changes
Paladin Class Changes
Priest Class Changes
Rogue Class Changes
Shaman Class Changes
Warlock Class Changes
Warrior Class Changes
S'abonner à Wowhead
Premium
2 $US
Un mois
[Enjoy an ad-free experience, unlock premium features, & support the site!]
Afficher les 0 commentaires
Masquer les 0 commentaires
Connectez-vous pour laisser un commentaire
Commentaire Anglais (47)
Poster un commentaire
Vous n'êtes pas connecté(e). Veuillez vous
connecter
ou vous
inscrire
pour ajouter votre commentaire.
Message précédent
Message suivant