Heroes!
The time has come for another update! We have a lot to cover, so let’s get straight into it.
Power Word: Revamp
Few spells are more iconic than the Discipline Priest ability Power Word: Shield. For this update we have changed a few talents and overhauled their Mystic Enchants, creating new synergies and lots of opportunities for novel playstyles to emerge. Here are the changes:
- Words of Healing has been made into a Legendary Mystic Enchant and had its effect reworked: Your Borrowed Time now also increases the critical strike chance of your direct healing spells by 15% while active. In addition, Borrowed Time is no longer consumed by casting spells, but its duration is reduced by 2 seconds.
- Dominant Word: Shield has been reworked. Now reads - Your Power Word: Shield now absorbs 250% of its normal value when used on a target below 75%. The additional absorb effect lasts for 5 seconds and reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield by 1 second. In addition, the mana returned to you from your Rapture is increased by 100%.
- [New Epic Enchant]: Continued Power - Reduces the effect granted by Copious Power by 33%, but Copious Power now has two charges.
- Final Shield has been changed to an Epic Mystic Enchant, from Legendary.
- Armor of Faith now grants a shield equal to 10% of the heal, up from 5%, and now also procs from Flash Heal.
- Soul Warding (talent) now reduces the cooldown of Power Word: Shield by 0.5/1 seconds, down from 2/4 seconds.
- Soul Warding (Mystic Enchant) now reduces the cooldown of Power Word: Shield by 0.3 seconds, down from 1 second.
- Power Word: Shield can now trigger Grace.
As you can tell, playstyles that combine Power Word: Shield with other heals are getting a lot more support. If you want to focus more narrowly on Power Word: Shield you can still do that too, now with a really powerful Legendary Mystic Enchant option in Dominant Word: Shield.
Scaling Bubbles
We have a few more changes happening to absorbs. These changes are primarily bugfixes, but we’d like to take a second to explain them anyway.
- Absorb spells such as Power Word: Shield, Mana Shield and Ice Barrier are now increased by PvE power. This change will result in their absorb value going up by approximately 24% for a fully PvE-geared character.
- Fixed a bug where talents that increased your Nature healing would increase the absorb effects of your Holy absorb spells and vice versa.
The primary purpose of this change is to make PvE power scaling consistent and to fix the bug where absorb spells wouldn’t benefit from it. This means that gear progression will be just as rewarding for players focusing on absorb spells as it is for their friends. To offset these changes and prevent them from causing a sudden surge in power for absorb spells, we have reduced the base amounts and scalings for the spells most affected by it:
- Reduced the absorb given by Mana Shield rank 6 by 15%, and rank 5 by 8%.
- The spell power scaling of Ice Barrier has been reduced from 70% to 40%.
- Fixed a bug where the coefficient of the Fire, Frost and Shadow Ward spells was too high. Their spell power scaling has been reduced from 70% to 40%.
- Reduced the scaling of Power Word: Shield to 48%, down from 60%.
- Updated Borrowed Time to properly show the multiplicative scaling (as all other coefficient-increasing talents do). The new tooltip now properly shows that the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield is increased by 8/16/24/32/40% of your healing power, up from 6/12/18/24/30%.
Power Up
We’ve also fixed some issues with PvE and PvP Power being inconsistent, and increased their values overall:
- PvE and PvP power values on gear have been tripled, but their effect reduced proportionally. The intent of this change is to make the values found on gear to more closely represent the power they grant.
- Fixed some issues with PvE and PvP power that caused it to scale incorrectly for different spells and abilities. This will result in melee auto-attack damage being increased by up to 8% in PvE, and all physical and periodic damage being increased by up to 8% in PvP. PvP mods have been updated to offset this change.
The intent of these changes is to make PvE and PvP power be more consistent and clear. There was an issue before where PvE and PvP power gave different bonuses to different attack types; that has been fixed so that now what you see in the tooltip is what you get.
The damage increases this will lead to in PvP would lead to some spells becoming too powerful, so we have tweaked PvP mods accordingly. The melee auto-attack damage buff in PvE isn’t being adjusted for, but will be a slight buff to melee PvE builds.
Furthermore, the PvP power and Resilience on Soulbound PvP gear has been increased.
- Increased the PvP Power and Resilience on Soulbound PvP Weapons by at least 33%. They will now have twice as much PvP Power and Resilience as their Bloodforged counterparts.
- Fixed an issue where Soulbound Level 60 PvP gear did not have increased amounts of Resilience and PvP Power compared to their Bloodforged counterparts.
A Soulbound PvP weapon will now have twice as much PvP Power and Resilience as a Bloodforged item of the same slot would have, and Soulbound gear will have about 50% more than the Bloodforged alternatives. Our goal with this change is to make Soulbound PvP gear progression feel more rewarding, while keeping Bloodforged gear as an easy-to-obtain alternative for players starting out.
Light Artillery
- Multi-Shot now deals 120% weapon damage, down from 130%.
- Focused Burst now makes your Multi-Shot into a channeled ability, which breaks on movement. Auto Shot still fires while channeling.
- Lone Wolf now increases damage by 3/6%, down from 4/8%.
- Arrows of Fire Mystic Enchant now has a scaling of 1.2%, down from 1.5%.
Hunter-based builds have been performing extremely well in PvE and Battlegrounds lately, largely because of the combination of being able to dish out top-tier single-target damage while also being more mobile than any other DPS build. Having that mobility is part of what makes these builds unique. With these changes, builds like these will still be strong when stationary, but will really stand out when they can leverage their mobility advantage.
New Enchants!
We of course also have some new Mystic Enchants for you!
- [New Legendary Enchant]: Fury of the Titans - Your maximum rage is increased to 300. You learn Titanic Strike, a finishing move that strikes with both of your weapons. When used at full rage, Titanic Strike makes you go into a Titanic Fury, increasing your physical damage dealt with all attacks by 15% (5% against players) and removing all rage costs for 12 seconds. When this effect ends, your rage is reset. Requires Titan's Grip.
- [New Epic Enchant]: Continued Power - Reduces the effect granted by Copious Power by 33%, but Copious Power now stacks twice.
- [New Epic Enchant]: Fetch Me Their Bones! - Dealing damage with Steady Shot or Wing Clip will reduce the cooldown of Kill Command by 2 seconds. In addition, your Kill Command now increases the damage done by an additional 5% per stack.
- [New Epic Enchant]: Lightning Discharge - While casting Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning your Lightning Shield is supercharged, increasing its damage by 50% and making it discharge pure energy, stunning nearby enemies when triggered.
- [New Epic Enchant]: Natural Synergy - Your Shaman direct healing spells increase the critical effect chance of your next Regrowth by 5%, stacking up to 10 times. The periodic heal of your Regrowth can now critically heal the target of your Earth Shield.
In addition to these new enchants, a lot of existing enchants got some love:
- Atonement now heals ALL targets affected by your Grace, instead of only healing one of them.
- Increased the attack power scaling of Frostbolt and Ice Lance from Ice Lash from 10% and 2% to 15% and 3% respectively. In addition, Ice Lash will now restore your Fingers of Frost to maximum stack count.
- Earth's Blessing has been changed to Epic, and now grants 2 charges of Earth Shield, and increases the healing of the next Earth Shield orb by 50%, stacking up to 3 times.
- Shadow Vision's Devouring Plague effect has been changed. It now reduces the periodic interval by 33%.
- Devouring is now an Epic Mystic enchant instead of Legendary.
- Psychic Influence now makes your Mind Flay increase the damage your Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch deals by 30%, up from 20%.
- The buff gained from Wild Wrath Mystic Enchant now stacks up to 3 times.
- Harnessed Energy can now stack Missile Barrage twice, but can only trigger Missile Barrage from Arcane Blast and Starfire.
- Transcendental Embrace now also triggers from Healing Wave.
- Earth's Blessing has been changed to Epic, and now grants 2 charges of Earth Shield, and increases the healing of the next Earth Shield orb by 50%, stacking up to 3 times.
- Lunar Spirits will now spread the Moonfire DoT effect without dealing instant damage. Lunar Spirit has been made into an Epic Mystic Enchant, and gained an effect. it now reads: Your Arcane Missiles spreads Moonfire on your target to other nearby enemies within 10 yards. In addition, you have a 10% chance on Moonfire ticks to grant a buff to your next Arcane Explosion which leaves a Lunar Spirit on targets hit, dealing damage over 6 seconds.
Wiki updates
One last thing! We’re constantly working on improving our wiki, so that information relevant to you will be easy to find. We’ve recently added two new pages, giving detailed descriptions of Buff and Debuff stacking and Diminishing Return (DR) categories.
Is there any other information you would like added to our wiki? If so, please let us know in the #suggestions channel of our Discord and we’ll do our best to add it.
That’s all for now! Have fun, stay safe and expect to hear from us soon.
