WoW Hotfix March 7th: Tier Set Tuning

Author: Baed
Date: March 8, 2022
Updated: March 8, 2022
Expansion: World of Warcraft

As the last hotfix before the Race to World’s First begins, this one brings a lot of tier set changes to many classes to bring them more in line in power, more nerfs to Mythic+ Tazavesh, as well as some tweaking to bosses before raids take on Sepulcher after the weekly reset.

Tier Set Changes

Unholy Death Knight: 4-piece set bonus is getting its damage increase doubled, going from a 5% minion damage bonus that increased to 25% after Soul Reaper, to a 10% bonus that increases to 50%.

Balance Druid: 2-piece set bonus now creates the Fury of Elune at 20% effectiveness instead of 25%. The 4 set bonus now reduces cost of Starsurge and Starfall by 15% instead of 20%.

Feral Druid: 2-piece set bonus reduces cooldown of Berserk by .7 seconds per combo point spent rather than .5, and the 4-set bonus Sickle of the Lion is getting a 25% damage increase.

Beast Mastery Hunter: The 4-piece set bonus now lets you spend the empowered effect from Kill Shot crits on Multi-shot for a 6 second increase in Beast Cleave duration.

Affliction Warlock: 2-piece set bonus is going from a 15% increase of damage on Malefic Rapture to a 25%. The 4-piece bonus now has a 30% chance for Shadow Bolt and 20% chance for Drain Soul to trigger the free Malefic Rapture cast, up from 20% and 10%.

Fury Warrior: The 2-piece set bonus gives Raging Blow a 10% damage increase instead of 15%, and the 4 piece bonus now gives Recklessness for 3 seconds instead of 4. Fury has also had it’s Conqueror’s Banner Legendary for Necrolord nerfed, now extending the banner every 25 rage cast instead of every 20.

Elemental Shamans: Not receiving any Tier set changes, but due to the potential of maintaining Storm Elementals for large periods of time, the amount of stacks you can get of Wind Gust has been reduced to 10, in order to prevent Lightning Bolt’s cast from staying as short as .6 seconds for extended amounts of time.

Raid Changes

The largest amount of changes belongs to Principal Architect Lihuvim, who has been adjusted in order to make the encounter more engaging, with buffs and bugfixes to his damage. The effect Protoform Disalignment has been fixed to grant 50% damage reduction on normal, and 20% on heroic, rather than the 90% it was granting this week. Damage of Cosmic Shift and Deconstructing Energy has been increased by 50% on Heroic. Unstable Motes deal 25% more damage on their creation, and Synthesize should cast more frequently.

The rest of the changes belong to other encounters, Prototype Pantheon should no longer have Humbling Strikes critically hit. Anduin will start his final phase if he has reached 10% health, and Artificer Xy’mox had a rendering issue with Xy Acolyte’s Massive Blast fixed to no longer be smaller than the effect. An odd change listed is that the Ruined Crest of Lordaeron shield has been removed from the Lords of Dread loot table for this upcoming week as Blizzard has found an issue with it they want to address first.

Mythic+

Tazavesh is receiving more Mythic+ tuning, with Streets of Wonder receiving nerfs to various mobs within the dungeon. Support Officer’s Hard Light Barrier is now a Magic effect; Tracker Zo’korss, Ancient Core Hound, and Commerce Enforcer are all receiving 20% health reductions, and Commander Zo’far is receiving a 25% reduction. Achilite in the Grand Menagerie will deal 25% less damage with Purging Protocol, and Alcruux’s Grand Consumption will deal 35% less damage. In So’leah’s Gambit, the only change is that Timecap’n Hooktail should no longer pierce immunities with Cannon Barrage.

Blizzard Entertainment – (Source)

March 7, 2022

Achievements

Fixed an issue that prevented the achievement The Protoform Matrix from being properly awarded if the Reaving Automa: Neo was killed while casting Unrepair Armor.

Classes

Death Knight
- Unholy
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Your minions deal 10% increased damage (was 5%). When Soul Reaper’s secondary effect triggers, this bonus increases to 50% for 8 seconds (was 25%).
    - Developers’ note: Unholy’s Tier Set bonus is intended to differentiate the spec from Frost by amplifying one of its niches; strong windows of single-target burst and high-value execute damage. The initial tuning of the bonus was simply too low to make good on that promise, especially when compared to the baseline single-target power other similar bonuses brought to the table.
Druid
- Balance
  - [With realm restarts] (2) Set Bonus: Entering a Lunar Eclipse now creates a Fury of Elune at 20% effectiveness (was 25%).
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: While in an Eclipse, the cost of Starsurge and Starfall is reduced by 15% (was 20%).
    - Developers’ note: The synergy that Balance’s tier set has with some options made this set perform a bit higher than intended. We want to bring Balance in-line with other tier set bonuses while still rewarding those synergistic choices. These changes should keep the power of Balance’s tier set bonus but rein in some of the higher outputs we were seeing.
- Feral
  - [With realm restarts] (2) Set Bonus: Berserk’s cooldown is now reduced by 0.7 seconds per combo point spent (was 0.5 seconds).
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Sickle of the Lion’s damage is increased by 25%.
    - Developers’ note: We really appreciate all of the feedback on the Feral set and feel that we should take some time to explain these changes. When previously tuning this bonus, we took multiple factors into account: the synergy of the set with other legendaries, its synergy with Feral’s kit, the AOE component, and more. Since we last made adjustments during PTR testing, we’ve gotten a chance to incorporate a great deal of the feedback provided and take a fresh look at the numbers and we found that – as players rightly called out – there was a disconnect in how impactful this bonus was in situations such as single-target encounters.
      Our goal with these changes is to keep Feral being a strong option in single-target encounters while increasing their AOE throughput. We will continue to actively watch discussions about this, and we want to say again: thank you for the feedback, and we appreciate the community’s patience as we take care with the tuning of this spec.
Hunter
- Beast Mastery
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: The set bonus now reads as – Kill Command critical hits empower your next Cobra Shot or Multi-Shot, increasing the damage and cooldown reduction of Cobra Shot by 40% or causing Multi-Shot to grant an additional 6 seconds of Beast Cleave.
    - Developers’ note: We are adding additional functionality to the 4-piece bonus for Beast Mastery Hunters. When your Kill Command critically strikes, it now empowers either your next Cobra Shot with the existing functionality, or causes your next Multi-Shot to cause your next Beast Cleave to last 6 seconds longer. This should allow you to focus more on Barbed Shot, Cobra Shot, and Kill Command in AoE situations and worry less about using a Multi-Shot every 4 seconds to keep the Beast Cleave buff active.
Priest
- Discipline
  - (2) Set Bonus: Fixed an issue where 2 stacks of Manifested Twilight could be consumed if Shadow Mend triggered the second application.
Shaman
- Elemental
  - [With realm restarts] Storm Elemental’s Wind Gust effect gained from casting Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning now has a maximum stack of 10 (was 20). Additionally, if you cast Storm Elemental again while having a Storm Elemental active, the Wind Gust buff will be reset.
    - Developers’ note: The ability to maintain Storm Elemental at long duration and high uptime allows for extended periods of Lightning Bolts with a cast time of less than 0.6 seconds. Players have reported that this is uncomfortable to play, and we believe it might pose a significant accessibility concern. For that reason, we would rather entirely avoid having a class talent allow cast times which are this short, to avoid similar problems in the future. We are reducing the maximum cast time reduction that can be granted by Storm Elemental. In addition, recasting a Storm Elemental while a Storm Elemental is already active will reset the stacks of Wind Gust.
- Enhancement
  - Fixed an issue where the global cooldown reduction of Frost Shock and Flame Shock were incorrectly benefitting from the effects of haste twice.
Warlock
- Affliction
  - [With realm restarts] (2) Set Bonus: Malefic Rapture’s damage is now increased by 25% (was 15%).
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Shadow Bolt now has a 30% chance and Drain Soul now has a 20% chance to make your next Malefic Rapture cost no Soul Shards and cast instantly (was 20% and 10% respectively).
    - Developers’ note: Affliction’s set bonus wasn’t providing enough of an impactful reward for executing its mechanic. These increases should increase the throughput of Affliction’s tier set and we hope that these changes will bring its output in line with other set bonuses.
Warrior
- Fury
  - [With realm restarts] (2) Set Bonus: Raging Blow damage reduced to 10% (was 15%).
  - [With realm restarts] (4) Set Bonus: Duration of Recklessness granted reduced to 3 seconds (was 4 seconds).
  - [With realm restarts] Glory (Necrolord Runecarving Power): The amount of Rage spent to extend Conqueror’s Banner increased to 25 for Fury Warriors (was 20).
    - Developers’ note: Fury’s tier set was stronger than intended and we will be reducing the power of both the 2-piece and 4-piece to better fit within our goal for tier bonuses. In addition, we will be increasing the amount of Rage required to extend Conqueror’s Banner duration while the Glory legendary is equipped. The overall uptime of Conqueror’s Banner with the Glory legendary, Set Bonus (and conduits) was much higher than intended. We hope with these changes that the overall feel of all covenant Fury builds remain intact but with much more reasonable output.

Creatures and NPCs

[With realm restarts] Completing the “Antros” world quest will now award 2 Anima Matrices [500 anima] (was 1 [250 anima]).

Cyphers of the First Ones

Glimmercane is now available to start the quest “Mysterious Greenery” after researching Sopranian Understanding.

Dungeons and Raids

Sepulcher of the First Ones
- Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause bosses to despawn immediately upon defeat.
- Artificer Xy’mox
  - Fixed issue where the visual effect of Xy Acolyte’s Massive Blast rendered smaller than the actual area of effect.
- Prototype Pantheon
  - Fixed an issue where Humbling Strikes could critically strike.
  - Updated the Dungeon Journal entry for Bastion’s Ward to accurately reflect the damage reduction provided to Runecarver’s Deathtouch.
- Lihuvim, Principal Architect
  - [With realm restarts] The first cast of Synthesize now occurs much earlier in the encounter.
  - [With realm restarts] Reduced the time between casts of Synthesize slightly.
  - [With realm restarts] The damage reduction granted by Protoform Disalignment has been reduced to 50% on Normal difficulty and 20% on Heroic difficulty (was 90%).
  - [With realm restarts] The damage inflicted by Cosmic Shift has been increased by 50% on Heroic Difficulty.
  - [With realm restarts] The damage inflicted when an Unstable Mote is created has been increased by approximately 25% on Heroic Difficulty.
  - [With realm restarts] Damage inflicted by Deconstructing Energy has been increased by 50% on Heroic Difficulty.
    - Developers’ note: We have identified an issue that caused Lihuvim to do significantly less raid damage than expected on all difficulties. While we typically do not increase the difficulty of encounters after release, we do sometimes intervene to address cases where a fight would otherwise be much less engaging than intended.
      We believe intervention is warranted in this case, and so with weekly resets we will be applying a number of changes intended to increase raid damage during the Lihuvim encounter. The biggest change will be to the Cosmic damage reduction provided by Protoform Disalignment, which was incorrectly reducing damage taken by 90%. We also made adjustments to other abilities to ensure raid damage ends up in a healthy place.
- Halondrus the Reclaimer
  - Fixed an issue preventing Theotar the Mad Duke’s Token of Appreciation ability (Venthyr Soulbind) from functioning during the encounter.
  - Fixed an issue where Priest’s Unholy Nova (Necrolord Ability) was unusable on Halondrus except in specific spots.
- Anduin Wrynn
  - [With realm restarts] If Anduin Wrynn reaches 10% health in non-Mythic difficulty before starting the final phase of the encounter, he will now immediately begin the final phase.
    - Developers’ note: Players are hitting this threshold in lower difficulties, this should shorten the encounter for groups that overpower the encounter.
- Lords of Dread
  - We’ve identified an issue with the Ruined Crest of Lordaeron shield and will be removing it from the loot table for one week. The shield should return to the loot table with next week’s scheduled weekly maintenance in each region.
Mythic+
- Fixed an issue where Mythic+ Rating for Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder was incorrectly calculated based on a 38 minute time limit.
  - Developers’ note: This fix is retroactive. Players should see their Mythic+ Ratings for existing runs adjusted accordingly.
Tazavesh: So’leah’s Gambit
- Timecap’n Hooktail
  - Fixed an issue where Cannon Barrage would pierce immunities.
Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder
- [With realm restarts] Support Officer’s Hard Light Barrier is now a Magic effect.
- [With realm restarts] Tracker Zo’korss health reduced by 20%.
- [With realm restarts] Ancient Core Hound health reduced by 20%.
- [With realm restarts] Commerce Enforcer health reduced by 20%.
- [With realm restarts] Commander Zo’far health reduced by 25%.
- The Grand Menagerie
  - Achillite
    - [With realm restarts] Purification Protocol damage reduced by 25%.
  - Alcruux
    - [With realm restarts] The damage of Grand Consumption has been reduced by 35%.

Items and Rewards

Players will no longer see additional unusable Revelation Keys drop if they already have two.
Bauble of Pure Innovation can now be looted properly by players who meet the requirements.

Quests

If players disconnect or leave before Hanoa’s resolution has concluded during “Jiro to Hero,” they can return to Hanoa Exile to start the event again and see the conclusion.