Blizzard Responds to Class Feedback - Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Mage, Priest, and Warlock!

The War Within Publié 29/05/2024 à 14:25 par Jaydaa

Death Knight

Greetings, Death Knights.

In today’s new Alpha build, we have updates to the Blood talent tree and new talents for the not-yet-implemented talents for both Frost and Unholy.

Our focus for Blood updates were heavily focused on the tree layout, updating existing talents to have more synergy with Blood’s kit, reducing the amount of 2-point talents, and moving a couple talents baseline (like Crimson Scourge and Death’s Carress). One major pain point we’ve heard expressed with Blood is how much friction there is to pick up Gorefiend’s Grasp in content where you may need it. In response to that we’ve updated the tree to have Gorefiend’s in a much more accessible location. While we generally like the accessibility it has in the new tree, we’ve been testing it internally and have realized that its new location has made it a bit difficult to avoid in scenarios where you might need the AoE grip. We will update the pathing again to make it still accessible but a bit more optional.

The other big point of contention for Blood is just how many talents you had to “buy in” to have a functioning baseline as a tank. We hope the combination of the reduced 2-point nodes, new pathing, and baseline abilities that there will now be more variety in your builds and flexibility when tackling different content.

We look forward to hearing your feedback. We will have some further updates to the pathing, especially as it pertains to Gorefiends as well as two new talents that are not yet implemented.

Demon Hunter

Today’s Alpha build update includes changes for Aldrachi Reaver Demon Hunters.

We’ve heard your feedback regarding short-duration buff windows and the rotational pressure they impose, and we’re taking steps to address that.

By reducing the frequency with which Art of the Glaive triggers, we open up some room to let your buffs persist for longer periods of time; we intend for this to smooth out the precision required and generally introduce more flexibility on timing. We’ve adjusted the value of several related effects to compensate for this slower cadence and will be continuing to iterate on pacing.

Please keep the feedback coming!

Druid

This week is mostly a suite of effect tuning for Druid of the Claw. Several Druid of the Claw bonuses provided uneven value to different abilities or specs, and we’ve adjusted the bonuses granted to various abilities to give them more comparable value.

We also adjusted the defensive value that the tree gives Feral and Guardian Druids. Tank specs should generally get more defensive value than DPS specs from their shared trees so that the tree doesn’t become a lock-in choice for DPS players in hard content, and Feral Druids of the Claw were getting a lot of defensive value.

Our intention for the Empowered Shapeshifting / Wildpower Surge node is for it to offer mostly defensive value for Feral and a mix of offensive and defensive power for Guardian, with a passive and more active shapeshifting option. Wildpower Surge should offer meaningful damage for Guardians who use it regularly (as well as granting them the defensive bonuses of effects like Ursine Vigor and Wildshape Mastery). We don’t intend for Wildshape Mastery’s damage bonus for Feral Druids to be so strong that they use it every time it’s available, as that’s a significant complexity increase to their rotation. Instead, it’s intended to ease the damage cost of entering Bear Form as a defensive.

Thank you for continued testing and feedback!

Mage

Hello mages!

We have another round of changes to all three specs showing up in the build today, and wanted to provide some more context for you.

Time Anomaly
In general, we’re happy with the gameplay around Time Anomaly. We feel the randomness it provides can create some fun (and frustrating) moments across pulls that helps to add texture to the Mage experience. An outlier here is for Frost Mage, which across all three specs has the weakest bonuses by a decent margin. We’ve changed Time Anomaly to now grant Brain Freeze instead of Fingers of Frost for Frost Mages to help increase the impact that this talent creates for that spec specifically.

For Mages who want to opt-out of the randomness of Time Anomaly, we are adding a new talent: Inspired Intellect, which will provide a flat increase to your Intellect. We’d like Inspired Intellect’s tuning to hit the expected value of Time Anomaly across a reasonable amount of pulls, and we will make adjustments to get there if necessary. People who enjoy the randomness Time Anomaly provides can expect a higher output compared to Inspired Intellect when things line up just right, but we don’t want that gap to be very large.

Spellslinger
We appreciate the feedback everyone has been providing towards the Mage Hero Talents. We’ve heard the complaints that Spellslinger feels a touch too passive, so we’re redesigning Spellfrost Teachings to better synergize with the “orb” aspect of the Spellslinger fantasy and add some more active gameplay. When Spellslingers get lucky, you’ll be able to see a slew of Orbs firing off, and they’ll hit much harder in those windows.

You’ll also notice substantial adjustments to Arcane’s Splinter damage in this set of changes. A bug was fixed that was preventing Spellslinger Splinters from appropriately triggering procs and benefitting from spell damage bonuses like Arcane Surge and Icy Veins. These changes paired with Arcane’s somewhat recent change to now fire two Arcane Splinters when consuming Nether Precision meant that Arcane’s output was substantially higher than what we consider in-bounds for Hero Talents at this stage. We’re still monitoring Frost’s Splinters, and more changes could be on the horizon as we continue to gather data.

Charring Embers
As mentioned in last week’s update alongside Arcane Battery’s removal for Arcane, we are removing Charring Embers from Fire’s spec tree. We appreciate all the feedback we’ve gotten regarding this talent, and we agree with the community that the removal of this talent helps to better align Fire Mage with our stated goals for these tree updates. With the removal of Charring Embers, Fire is seeing a few replacement talents added and a few talents returning to ensure there is enough choice in Gate 2 specifically.

That’s all for this week! Thank you for your continued feedback.

Priest

Hello, Priests.

We’ve updated the Oracle tree for this week’s build with a few changes. Primarily, we’ve updated Premonition to rotate through its spells only by casting Premonition. There is no longer an option to change the spells based on casting spells on the global cooldown. We like that players will rotate through the available spells and removes complications with choosing which Premonition to use after casting each Priest spell. We’ve also replaced the capstone with an effect that triggers all Premonitions at once after each have been cast. While this effect is not available immediately in combat, we feel that with 2 charges of the spell and the availability of a cooldown reduction talent there is space for the effect to occur during your activity of choice.

We’ve removed Prompt Deliverance, which reduced the cooldown of Purify. Oracle Priests can still uniquely use Premonition of Insight to lower Purify’s cooldown if needed during a clutch moment, but we’ve decided it’s better to keep the single target defensive dispel cooldowns aligned across the healers.

We’ve added a defensive node with a couple options for either improved self-healing or increased survival to burst.

We’ve back off on talents that could encourage Holy to use Power Word: Shield rotationally or Discipline to use Prayer of Mending rotationally. These talents effects are now focused on the spec’s more iconic spell.

Thank you for your continued feedback!

Warlock

Greetings Warlocks.

In today’s new build, we’re focusing on the Affliction and Destruction specialization trees. We’ve changed the structure and pathing of both trees and would like to provide context for some of the other changes you’ll see in this build.

Affliction
We’ve moved Darkglare upwards in the tree to make it much easier to get. We’ve shifted talents to the third section and added new talents to increase how many options are available. We’re evaluating how many two-point nodes are available and are looking to revise in a future build.

We’ve also looked at Haunt and increased the amount of damage it does baseline to make it feel more impactful upon cast. We’ve introduced Improved Haunt as well, which is a new talent that further expands upon Haunt. Lastly, we’ve moved Haunt to the second section of the tree to make it easier to pick given how much it adds to Affliction’s single-target toolkit.

Destruction
We’re trying something new and moving Dimensional Rift, a powerful tool that gives Destruction warlocks a bit more mobility, to the center of the tree and returning Infernal to the bottom section. Infernal serves as a powerful cooldown that leveling warlocks can look forward to unlocking, but during playtesting it felt that Dimensional Rift served as a much more impactful tool.

We’ve trimmed the number of talents available and moved around so that the second and third sections feel a bit closer in terms of the number of talents available.

We appreciate the feedback and will continue to watch for discussions as they happen.

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