Heroes!
Time for another update! We’ve boosted the survivability of melee players in heroic raids, given casters tools to make them harder to shut down in PvP, tweaked spells and talents, fixed a lot of bugs and of course implemented some new enchants!
Below you'll find a summary of the changes, and those of you who keep reading to the end will find a special holiday from the team. For the full changelog, click here.
knives to a gunfight
After todays update, Melee players will find it much easier to survive through heroic raids.
Melee players will now take up to 30% reduced damage from Area of Effect spells in level 70 heroic difficulty raids.
This change will apply to anyone playing a melee DPS build, but will not apply to tanks, casters or healers. With this, playing a melee build should feel a lot less scary. You'll still need to stay on your toes and out of those fires though!
For those of you interested in the technical details: The damage reduction effect reduces AoE damage taken similarly to the Enveloping Shadows effect, and will be active on players who spend global cooldowns on melee abilities. It will not activate if you are in Bear Form, Defensive Stance or have Righteous Fury active, as it's not meant to benefit tanks. It also requires your primary stat to be Agility or Strength and is removed by dealing damage with Auto-Shot - again because the effect is meant to benefit melee players who can not deal ranged damage.
Hardcasting vs players now less hard
We’ve made a handful of PvP changes aimed at strengthening the position of CC-reliant casters against being overrun by melee and hunters.
The Burning Determination capstone has been adjusted. It now triggers whenever a spell cast is interrupted by any silence, interrupt or crowd control effect.
Wind Shear now has a 22 second cooldown (from 20) and can be cast from a range of 20 yards (from 25).
Travel Form now costs about 20% more mana than before.
With these changes we’re hoping that builds that rely on controlling your enemies to create room to set up a burst will see more play, and will be less susceptible to being overrun and shut down by a charging warrior.
small tweaks to big heals
Increased the healing power coefficient of Greater Heal to 44.4%, from 42.4%. In addition, the base heal value of Greater Heal rank 13 has been increased by 31.
Increased the healing power coefficient of Healing Touch to 46.0%, from 43.0%. In addition, the base heal value of Healing Touch rank 13 has been increased by 40.
Increased the healing power coefficient of Healing Wave to 44.4%, from 42.4%. In addition, the base heal value of Healing Wave rank 12 has been increased by 100.
The base heal value of Holy Light rank 11 has been reduced by 90.
Prior to these tweaks, Holy Light was the heal with the lowest cast time, highest base value and highest healing power coefficient. It made the other heals jealous in every way. With these six buffs and one nerf, the power distribution between heals should be much more fair, and the gaps smaller. Holy Light still has the highest base healing (at level 70), but the other heals aren’t far behind, and Healing Touch now has the highest healing power coefficient.
Other changes
Some rarely used tanking talents have been reworked and given new identities, and talents such as Deflection that exist in several classes’ trees have been renamed to be easier to distinguish from one another.
A few of the most powerful Hunter talents have been tuned down a little.
Hunter pet talent trees got a lot of updates. Weaker talent options were made stronger.
Tremor and Cleansing Totems now both have a short cooldown. Compared to other similar spells they were way too powerful (both in PvE and PvP) not to have any sort of drawback. Placing them will now require a bit of care.
On our Legacy server, the Ability Essence cost of some less commonly picked abilities has been lowered to make them more attractive.
We’ve fixed tons of bugs, and some some minor number tweaks to abilities, talents and enchants.
and of course: New enchants!
You didn’t think we’d leave you without any new enchants, did you?
[New Legendary Enchant]: Ambidextrous - Your Single-Minded Fury off-hand attacks have a 50% chance to trigger an instant attack with your main-hand weapon and increase your attack power by 10% for 6 seconds. Your Bloodthirst and Execute have a chance to trigger an instant attack with your off-hand weapon and increase your off-hand damage by 40% for 6 seconds. These effects have separate internal cooldowns lasting 12 seconds and cannot occur simultaneously.
[New Legendary Enchant]: Ice Lash - Your Lava Lash is transformed into Ice Lash, dealing Frost damage and giving you a stack of Solid Ice, increasing the damage of your Frostbolt and Ice Lance based on your attack power. If cast while Fingers of Frost is active, Ice Lash is guaranteed to critically hit and grant a charge of Fingers of Frost.
[New Epic Enchant]: Shroud of Concealment - Your mastery of illusions allows you to stay in Stealth for an additional second after initiating a Mage spell cast.
[New Epic Enchant]: Harnessed Energy - Your Arcane Blast debuff now lasts for 10 seconds and gives 30% Arcane damage and 250% increased mana cost of Arcane Blast regardless of how many stacks you have. It is consumed one stack at a time instead of all at once.
[New Epic Enchant]: Clear Mind - Your Elemental Focus effect gains an additional charge and now grants 3% spell haste while active.
[New Epic Enchant]: Controlled Explosion - Increases the damage of Explosive Shot on its main target by 12% but reduces its area damage by the same amount.
[New Epic Enchant]: Sunder Soul - Replaces your Sunder Armor with Sunder Soul, a Shadow melee attack that deals 70% of your weapon damage and increases your spell critical strike chance against the target by 3%, stacking up to 5 times. If an enemy dies with 5 stacks of Sunder Soul you gain a Soul Shard. [In Wildcard mode, this spell will enable the rolling of Soul Shard-requiring spells when known.]
A Christmas treat
Lastly, as promised, we come bearing gifts.
For the remainder of the year, all epic and legendary enchants are exchangeable! This means that you can bring an item with an epic enchant to an altar and reforge it to any other epic enchant in your collection for free!
Happy holidays!
