Class Writer Thoughts on January 12th Class Tuning - Frost Mage, Assassination Rogue, Fury Warrior Buffs

Live Posted 2021/01/09 at 10:11 AM by Anshlun

announced balancing changesBlood Death Knight

Bone Shield grants armor equal to 70% of Strength (was 50%).

Fundamentally, as the lowest armor tank right now, we had a damage intake issue and a relatively higher risk of being bursted down by melee attacks. This was even more visible in Mythic+ than in raids, but visible in both thanks to the higher than expected melee damage in Mythic Castle Nathria.

The blood Death Knight Bone shield change is a change that is a welcome addition, but not groundbreaking, and does not really change that much. You can expect to see 3-5% additional physical DR depending on your gear and the difficulty of the content you are doing (thanks to K scaling with content difficulty), amplified further thanks to Fallen Crusader procs, and amped up slightly further when using strength potions instead of raw DPS potions. This does not do anything against any damage not reduced by armor, evidently, of which there is a bit in keys (a lot of packs have instant tankbusters or casts with very low cast time, the best example being Bonestrike).
Frost Death Knight

All damage is increased by an additional 2% while a two-handed weapon is equipped.

Buffing 2H frost's overall damage is a nice change. By not only focusing the 2H power into pure single target, the spec is helped against dual wield in all scenarios. 2% is a low number though and won't be enough to make 2H better than DW. However, the difference in pure single target will now be closer, making the choice between running 2H and DW even more about your weapon choices. If you have a good 2H weapon, running 2H instead of DW for Obliteration is an even more probable scenario.
Frost Mage

All damage abilities increased by 9%.

Since Frost currently has a passive negative modifier of -19%, it is unclear how this buff will be calculated. Technically speaking, the actual net effect could end up adding 8.64% to 11.11% damage depending on if this change is additive or multiplicative, and how the rounding might occur. We won’t know for certain until the change makes it to the live game.

In practice, this will no doubt help Frost Mages compete in M+ and raids with their Fire and Arcane counterparts, but there are still issues. The biggest one is that Frost requires a different covenant (Venthyr) in order to maximize its damage. This coupled with the fact that different legendaries are also needed means that to try the specialization out, you have to commit a lot of time and resources up-front. I doubt many mages will take that leap until others show that it can produce results on Warcraft logs.

That being said, in a fight like Mythic Stone Legion Generals, this change might push Frost Mage into the limelight as the best Mage spec, although for this fight that isn’t saying much. In Mythic+ it will also help the spec a lot as well. I welcome this change, but I also think it highlights a larger problem with Shadowlands when it comes to covenants and legendaries and how they restrict multi-spec play.
Brewmaster Monk

All damage is increased by an additional 2% while a two-handed weapon is equipped.

For players who already have their gear optimized (i.e., they’re dual-wielding), this is a non-change. If you’ve had a bad run of luck in gearing, and are saddled with a 2-hander as your best weapon option, this should bridge the gap between dual-wielding and 2-handing.

Ultimately, dual-wielding still confers the benefit of 2 weapon enchants, so you shouldn’t go out of your way to switch to 2-handers if you are dual-wielding, but at least getting a Mythic raid level 2-handed weapon in your weekly Great Vault rewards won’t sim as a downgrade from Mythic 0 1-handers. I’m not speaking from experience -- or am I?
Windwalker Monk

All damage is increased by an additional 2% while a two-handed weapon is equipped.

Windwalker finally saw some balancing between 2H and 1H weapons. Previously they had been close enough to go with whatever was the highest item level, with 1H weapons having a slight edge at similar item levels. However, at the start of Shadowlands, Blizzard attempted to close the gap and only succeeded in widening by buffing 1H weapon usage. With this 2% buff to all damage done when using a 2H weapon, this helps to close the gap enough that they should be back to being based on the item level with a slight edge to 1H at similar item levels. With this gap getting much closer, Windwalker are back to needing to use sims to determine what is best, as there's not a way to come up with a "general rule" for people to follow. This should dramatically increase the available weapons for Windwalkers, and limit the disappointment in getting a 2H weapon from the Great Vault.
Assassination Rogue

All damage abilities increased by 8%.

The new and well-deserved buff to Assassination should nudge up the spec a bit more and be somewhat closer to what TCs recommended for a buff before the Raid launched in the first place. It should make it catch up a bit to the other Rogue specs on Single Target (rough estimate of -4% behind now) and potentially make it an interesting choice for cleave. I'm curious to see how the numbers will play out when they go live though, both DPS and player distribution. The spec has so few players right now that I don't think it being less far behind will make many players reconsider their spec and gearing strategy. This buff is probably unlikely to replace Sub as the Single Target favorite and Outlaw as the better Cleave/AoE spec.
Fury Warrior

All damage abilities increased by 8%, except for Bladestorm and Dragon Roar.

Meat Cleaver talent now increases Whirlwind's damage by 25% (was 30%).

The buffs are a welcome change which should bring Fury closer in line with Arms, although it will remain one of the weaker single target specializations, and Arms will remain the go-to raiding spec due to the prevalence of Sweeping Strikes on several encounters. Despite popular opinion, Fury is actually very strong in M+, and although Bladestorm is purposefully omitted from the buff, Fury's innate cleave via Whirlwind (buff) is increased, along with its single target.

Most interesting is the Meat Cleaver (talent) nerf, which would seem to be meant to preserve the balance of the L45 tier, as Whirlwind itself is being buffed while Dragon Roar and Bladestorm are not. While the reasoning makes sense, Meat Cleaver is already slightly behind in Single Target and significantly behind in multitarget, with no content in which it really shines - making it strange that they would make as point of preserving the talent balance, rather than giving players a reason to want to talent into Meat Cleaver.

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Comment by KorriBuff dh.Comment by brujahrlzso frost mages need to be vanthyr for mythic+ too or just for raiding?Comment by deathlavitzand the classes just above these sink below them, the cycle of who's worst anyways continues.Comment by 420Toweliefix havoc! single target its absolutely garbage. mt is fine tho.Comment by KucheshkiMurlocStill waiting for unholy dk...Comment by Deathwhisper24Doubt this will change much for any of the 3 buffed specs. Even if they were to buff their damage by 15-20% they would still be struggling to reach middle of the pack.

Better than nothing I guess.Comment by dragunladeeI'd like to see them revert the nerf to BM hunters. They are already behind MM and the nerf wasn't needed. Add to that the cap to our aoe and we're seeing BM hunters actually being removed from groups because they are BM, even if they bring a lust pet for the groups without a mage or shammy.Comment by Megiculawhy would they do that ? the DH was OP for 4 years give other classes the time to shine.Comment by zetsu193The fury buffs are nice but overall the class needs something other than just numbers to be great again. I feel like making frenzy a built in ability instead of a talent might help and remove the stupid lose it when you rampage another target part and it would feel so much better. if it gets out of hand either reduce the numbers back down for make the amount of haste gained lower.Comment by TikimaxThis is nice and all, but right now Havoc Dh is around the same position like Fury Warrior, Assa Rogue and Frost Mage....Where is our buffs Blizzard?Comment by Needlefirefix BM. it is a sad sad day when i cant hold my own against an MMComment by Shimuzisoooooo, still no survival update?Comment by PanTraczwhy would they do that ? the DH was OP for 4 years give other classes the time to shine.Comment by woeloenyes its absolutely usefull to tell wowhead that they have to buff DH, bcs its on them, not on blizzard to do this. wowhead is NOT blizzardComment by NeedlefireI'd like to see them revert the nerf to BM hunters. They are already behind MM and the nerf wasn't needed. Add to that the cap to our aoe and we're seeing BM hunters actually being removed from groups because they are BM, even if they bring a lust pet for the groups without a mage or shammy.Comment by tuckerrulzCan I PLEASE get something for survival.Comment by Oxyiai mean, these fixes are just as disappointing as the first round. I play rogue and when they buffed assa 5%, people were literally laughing joking saying "ok, i dont' do 1k dps less than sub now, only 900 dps". Buffing it another 8% (for a 13% total buff) still leaves it well behind outlaw and sub, so who the hell would go and change gear and stats to play something that performs worse than what they currently use? Assa has literally gone unplayed since prepatch, the only way people will play it now is if you actually make it strong, like ww or udk strong. Give it another 8% on top of what u just did, then maybe it will actually see play.Comment by tuckerrulzSurvival has always been at the bottom with zero love from blizz.Comment by Jirek2101You're not supposed to beat a spec that doesn't have nearly your mobility, that's supposed to be the tradeoff with BM.

All you hunters that got too comfortable in Nyalotha where you could play the 100% mobility spec and thanks to corruption also did the most damage need to wake up, that wasn't supposed to happen.

MM is going to be the dominant spec, and should be for a while. BM should always take a hit in damage until some of it's moves are not 100% mobile.Comment by pektiJust further shows us that the balance concerning covenant abilities is so grossly skewed. That mess should've never been released like that in the first place.

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