Heroes! 

The first Arena Season is about to come to an end and Serpentshrine Cavern is just around the corner. For this Classless update we have some serious long-term improvements to itemization and tanking especially. Let's get into it!

Tier 5 set reworks

As discussed in a previous article, the Tier 5 set bonuses have been reworked with the goal of making them flavourful and unique while still being appealing to a variety of builds. Our intent with these changes is to make sure that every player has as many unique-feeling and interesting gearing options as possible so that you have more freedom to build your character the way you want. Below follow some examples of the updated set bonuses.

• Avatar Regalia 2-set: Increases your spell damage by 6% of your Spirit.
• Crystalforge Raiment 2-set: Increases your spell critical chance by 4% while above 75% mana.
• Rift Stalker 2-set: Increases your Agility and Intellect by 3%.
• Destroyer Plate 2-set: Your attacks made to targets above 90% health generate bonus threat.

• Tirisfal Regalia 4-set: Arcane critical strikes increase your spell haste by 6%. Fire critical strikes increase your spell critical strike chance by 6%. Frost critical strikes increase the damage of your critical strikes by 4%. Each effect lasts for 8 seconds and they have a 6 seconds shared cooldown.
• Cataclysm Raiment 4-set: Your non-critical heals increase the effect of your next critical heal by 8%, stacking up to 3 times. This effect can not trigger on full overheals.
• Deathmantle 4-set: Using any finisher has a chance to lethally poison the target, increasing your damage dealt to the target by 10% (5% to players) and dealing Nature damage over 8 seconds.
• Destroyer Armor 4-set: When your health drops below 35% your block value is increased by 40%. This effect lasts for 5 seconds and can only occur every 30 seconds.

Will you go for one of the 4-piece set bonuses that are strong for your build? Maybe combine two different 2-piece set bonuses, or even skip set bonuses altogether and focusing on getting the strongest individual items? It’s up to you!

Mp5 items buffed

With access to every mana regeneration talent and ability in the game, Mana regeneration isn’t particularly attractive as a stat on items. In order to make items with Mp5 on them more attractive, we have increased the amounts of Mp5 and spell power found on these items. 

• Items with Mp5 have been buffed. Their Mp5 has been increased by 50% and they have also gained that same amount as bonus Spell Power. As an example, an item that previously had 10 Mp5 and 30 Spell Power will now have 15 Mp5 and 35 Spell Power.

As a result of this, the power of the items with mana regeneration has gone up, and these items should be more appealing. The increase is quite cautious so far, but it’s very possible it will be increased further in the future.

Free Spirit

In the same spirit (hahaaaaa) of the Mp5 buffs and as part of the effort to make item choices more meaningful, several changes aimed at making items with Spirit more appealing have been made. Instead of changing the items, these changes are to talents and Mystic Enchants that make Spirit a more powerful stat.

• Improved several Spirit conversion talents and effects, such as Spiritual Guidance, Improved Moonkin Form and the Fierce Mind mystic enchant.
• Spirit Tap, Moonglow, and Holy Concentration have all been reworked to increase your total spirit by up to 30%. These effects do not stack with each other, so you don’t have to worry about getting all of them at once.
• The Meditation Capstone effect now increases your spell critical strike rating by 15% of your Spirit.
• New Capstone: Living Spirit - With the final rank of this talent, your Rejuvenation now heals for an additional 50% on targets below 50% health.
• New Capstone: Student of the Mind - With the final rank of this talent, your spell damage is increased by 15% of your Spirit.

With these changes, gearing and building your character around Spirit will be a seriously powerful option, especially for builds that can make the most use of these buffed talents.

The Fierce Pierce

The purpose of Fierce Blow - which is a melee attack many bosses and other monsters use - is to make sure that tanks will have to deal with at least some unavoidable damage. Fierce blow cannot be dodged, blocked or parried, which makes sure that PvE encounters can’t be trivialized by chained Evasions or other things that make players unhittable. 

With this update, Fierce Blow has been buffed to also pierce 50% of absorbs on the target. This means that if a boss deals 2000 damage with Fierce Blow on a tank with a Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis capable of absorbing 1000 damage, only 500 of the damage will be absorbed. So 1500 damage will be dealt to the tank, and the 500 remaining absorb value will carry over to the next attack.

Sounds a bit scary right, bosses getting a Fierce Blow buff? Luckily, there are a whole bunch of buffs to tank talents and abilities too!

• The Anticipation Capstone effect now increases shield block value by 20%, up from 15%.
• Anticipation now also grants 3/6/9/12/15% block value.
• The armor bonus of Thick Hide (Feral talent) has been increased to 7/14/20%, up from 5/10/15%. In addition, this talent now also increases Stamina by 1/2/3%.
• Savage Defense now reduces the damage taken by an amount equal to 35% of your attack power, up from 25%.
• Improved Victory Rush now increases threat by 33/66/100%, up from 20/40/60% increased threat.
• Thunder Clap now deals 60% increased damage while wielding a two-hander, up from 40%.
• Gag Order now also increases the threat of your Shield Slam by 5/10%.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Critical Block not to reduce the damage properly when critically blocking.

Going forward, being a tank will be less about how many absorb effects you can get your allies to cast on you, and more about how much damage you can actually withstand. And as always, if anything goes wrong you can always blame the healers.

Setting the stage

Lastly we have a bunch of changes aimed at reinforcing some of the slightly less performant DPS choices for PvE, in order to make competition for those top DPS spots even more fierce.

• Increased the duration of Netherwind Presence to 10 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
• Increased the damage of Immolate by 7%.
• Increased Lightning Bolt's base damage by 8%, and spell power scaling by 4%.
• Increased Chain Lightning's base damage by 8%, and spell power scaling by 4%.
• Increased the damage of Backstab and Ambush by approximately 8%. Ambush now deals 20% reduced damage to players, from 15%.
• Improved Faerie Fire now increases the critical strike chance of your Druid damage spells by 2% per rank, up from 1% on targets afflicted by Faerie Fire.
• Increased the damage of Wrath by 4%.
• Increased the weapon damage of Divine Storm to 135%, up from 130%. Also fixed a bug causing Divine Storm to do less damage than indicated by the tooltip.
• Wrecking Crew no longer requires Battle Stance.
• Mutilate now deals 135% weapon damage, up from 130%.
• Mortal Strike now deals 140% weapon damage, up from 130%. It now deals 45% reduced damage to players, from 40%.
• Demolishing Strike now deals 165% weapon damage, up from 150%. It now deals 35% reduced damage to players, from 30%.

Soon, soon...

The full changelog for everything discussed in this post will come as the changes go live on Thursday. Shortly thereafter we will be releasing several new Legendary and Epic Mystic Enchants more oriented toward PvP gameplay, along with some PvP balance updates as well as updates to the Season 2 arena gear and set bonuses and a tweak to the way Resilience works. Sit tight, and can expect to hear from us soon (tm).