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

Live Publié 09/01/2021 à 10:11 par Anshlun

announced balancing changesBlood Death Knight

Bouclier d’os 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 Frappe-d’os).
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 Tempête de lames and Rugissement de dragon.

Fendoir à viande talent now increases Tourbillon'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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