Season of Discovery Class Tuning Incoming - 28 February

As we continue to monitor class performance and player feedback in Season of Discovery, we’ve designed the following tuning adjustments, which we intend to implement with scheduled weekly maintenance:

Druid

• Lifebloom mana cost reduced by 50%.
  • Developers’ notes: Lifebloom refunds half its new base mana cost per stack when it expires or is dispelled. This part has always functioned in this way, and we’ve seen a bit of confusion around how the mana return portion of Lifebloom functions.
• Living Seed now heals for 50% of the critical heal that planted the seed (was 30%). This heal now blooms from non-periodic healing received, in addition to any damage taken.
• Nourish mana cost reduced by 27%.
• Moonkin Form now also reduces the mana cost of Moonfire by 50% and increases Moonfire periodic damage by 50%. Sunfire also benefits from this change.
• Moonkins can now cast non-healing Restoration spells without cancelling their shapeshift. This includes: Remove Curse, Remove Poison, Abolish Poison, Innervate, Rebirth, Revive, Mark of the Wild, and Gift of the Wild.
• Fury of Stormrage improved: when this rune makes Healing Touch instant, it now also makes it castable in all shapeshift forms.

Hunter

• Dual Wield Specialization no longer grants a 30% damage bonus to Raptor Strike for wielding two weapons of the same type.

Paladin

• Crusader Strike now deals Holy damage instead of Physical damage, ignoring armor, and is now affected by Holy damage prevention. Crusader Strike is still considered a melee attack, and not a spell.
• Seal of Martyrdom can no longer trigger Art of War, and will no longer be triggered by Frost Oil or other weapon procs.

Rogue

• Redirect no longer triggers or is affected by the global cooldown, and its own cooldown has been reduced to 10 seconds.
  • Developers’ notes: when Redirect is combined in a macro with other Combo Point related abilities, it often does not function as expected. We recommend not including it in such macros.
• Main Gauche now generates 3 combo points on your target and base Energy cost reduced to 15.
• Just a Flesh Wound threat bonus increased such that Rogue tanks will generate approximately 30% more threat.

Shaman

• Two-Handed Mastery rune now also provides 10% increased Attack Power and 10% increased chance to hit with spells after hitting a target with a two-handed weapon.
• Shamanistic Rage rune now grants 5% of the Shaman’s maximum mana per
  second, instead of a value scaling from Attack Power, Spell Power, or Healing Power.
• Spirit of the Alpha rune now grants the casting Shaman 20% increased Attack Power if they cast the spell on a target other than themselves.
• Earth Shield mana cost reduced by 67%, and charges increased from 3 to 9. The base amount healed now properly scales with level and is about 50% higher than previously at level 40.
• Power Surge tooltip revised to clarify functionality. This rune periodically grants mana every 5 seconds, equal to 15% of the Shaman’s intellect. Some potential timing issues that could have sometimes made it give less mana than intended have been fixed.
• Ancestral Guidance cooldown reduced to 1 minute (was 2 minutes).

Gnomeregan

• The increased armor value of certain mechanical bosses in Gnomeregan has been reduced slightly.
  • Developers’ notes: The higher armor values on certain mechanical enemies in Gnomeregan was correct and intended, but we will adjust the armor on Crowd Pummeler 9-60 and Mekingeer Thermaplugg slightly to provide up to a 10% increase in physical damage received, depending on modifiers present. We also checked the Mechanical Managerie, and it is using the correct armor values.