Season of Discovery Class Tuning Incoming - February 27

Greetings,

Wanted to chime in and provide a quick update to this note:

We’ve decided not to send this specific part of the paladin changes live on Tuesday.

While this could arguably be considered a bug, we are simply going to let it ride as it is not nearly as problematic as the second part of the bug that allowed weapon procs to trigger the full damage of Seal of Martyrdom.

That separate bug fix to prevent Martyrdom from proccing from Frost Oil and other procs will go live as planned but we understand that for some it was an interesting interaction. It’s never a great time when you feel like you caught a “fun detected” nerf, and while we couldn’t really allow this bug to continue in its current form for obvious reasons, we are currently discussing ways to recapture some of what made it interesting and some of the power it provided without the somewhat janky and unintuitive behavior.

We appreciate your feedback around this and are looking forward to continuing to provide regular updates and adjustments as the phase rolls on.

Thank you!

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.