WoW Hotfix April 19th: Survival and Destruction AOE Nerfs

Author: Baed
Date: April 19, 2022
Updated: April 19, 2022
Expansion: World of Warcraft

Survival and Destruction have been performing better than Blizzard want, and they have added some soft AOE caps to their main cleave abilities to tone them down. Survival’s Wildfire Bomb is receiving damage reduction past 8 targets, while Destruction’s Rain of Fire will generate less Soul Shards when dealing damage on more than 5 units.

On more minor notes, Balance 2-piece tier bonus has been fixed to no longer cast Celestial Pillar beyond 40 yards, and also to no longer spawn on top of allies.

Blizzard Entertainment – (Source)

April 18, 2022

Classes

Druid
- Balance
  - (2) Set Bonus: Celestial Pillar should only be able to be cast while within Wrath range, otherwise it will default to a target that is within range that is in combat with the player.
  - (2) Set Bonus: Fixed an issue where Celestial Pillar would spawn on allies.
Hunter
- Survival
  - [With realm restarts] Wildfire Cluster (Runecarving Power) explosions now deals reduced damage when striking beyond 8 targets.
Warlock
- Destruction
  - [With realm restarts] Inferno (Talent) now has a reduced chance for Rain of Fire to generate Soul Shard Fragments when it deals damage beyond 5 targets.

Developer Note: With this week’s weekly maintenance, we’re reducing the damage of Survival Hunters and Destruction Warlocks against high target counts. In both cases, we were very deliberate in making changes that would not affect either spec below 5 or 8 targets. We were seeing situations where these specs had become dominant due to builds that emerged from 9.2. In the case of Survival Hunters, we still feel that the Wildfire Cluster will serve as an excellent Legendary choice in AoE situations but we are throttling its damage in a manner similar to other AOE abilities. For Destruction, we are focusing on the synergy between Inferno and Rain of Fire that leads to a dramatic increase in damage with target count due to resource generation.

Items and Rewards