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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGhostcrawler: Round 1 of patch 4.0.1 class rebalancing implemented
by Fox Van Allen 
Oct 14th 2010 at 3:00PM
WoW Insider's own Matt Rossi had a terrific post yesterday about the class balancing issues that we were seeing with patch 4.0.1. Casters like me were experiencing the thrill of god mode, with reports of mages being able to one-shot their opponents. And while we casters were getting sweet, delicious ponies, melee players got a big pile of pony excrement. Arms and fury DPS were down -- way down. So was retribution paladin and kitty DPS.
Last night, Lead Systems Designer Ghostcrawler let us all know that fixes were on the way. Today, he confirmed that fixes were implemented and explained what was done to each affected class to balance them out. The full post explaining who got buffed, who got nerfed and why is available just after the break.
Class balance as of Oct 13, 2010We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.
With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:
1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.
We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.
We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.
2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.
3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.
4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.
5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.
We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.
With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:
1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.
We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.
We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.
2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.
3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.
4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.
5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.
We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.
This is it! Patch 4.0.1 begins the slide into December's upcoming expansion. It's a whole new game from here on out. Get oriented with our roundup of everything there is to know about patch 4.0.1 and how it changes the game until the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Filed under: News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 9 of 9)
Firus Oct 14th 2010 6:32PM
There is a fix floating around the CS forums actually. Just type:
/console bloattest 1
Into your chat box. If you like to have nameplates overlapping instead of stacking, also type:
/console spreadnameplates 0
lishuss Oct 15th 2010 12:07AM
thanks loads, mate
spookykabuki Oct 14th 2010 5:57PM
I agree with ya. I was just saying 30k crits without any debuff. Actually spiked a few over 60k. Didn't do that before. I hadn't tried it in heroics.
FraterF93 Oct 14th 2010 6:37PM
Instead of Deathwing, I think a pic of Ghostcrawler's avatar should go with the bubble "I BROKE YOUR WORLD!"
fleisch Oct 14th 2010 7:50PM
How has no one mentioned Holy Paladins yet?! We're useless now! Priests dick on us in terms of healing prowess on tanks and we're meant to be geared in plate so we can take melee damage from healing next to the tank (as their healer...)....whyyyy blizzard, whyyyyy
/runs off crying
Natsumi Oct 15th 2010 12:10AM
How were you not drowning in Holy plate in the first place? We have 8 pallies and not only do they almost all have full Holy sets at 264, we STILL have to DE Holy Plate. MAKE ALL PALLIES USE HOLY PLATE BLIZZ!! At least then it will be useful.
Caleb Oct 18th 2010 10:41AM
You must be doing something wrong as I have no issues matching any other healing class in ICC and VoA
Zahira Oct 14th 2010 8:31PM
ok so no mention of rogues anywhere by GC or in other comments...Maybe it's just me and I need to adjust more to the new rotation, but I'm definitely doing much less DPS. Although I'm loving recoop! Is it just me or did rogues get hit with the nerf bat too? Please if it's just me then say so and I'll get back to work on my combat spec rotation, in the mean time I'm enjoying leveling my feral kitty druid which definitely is doing a lot more damage then it was before, I'm doing 300 dps at lvl 45 to everyone else's 100 dps, it's much easier to level.
Ty Oct 14th 2010 11:02PM
QQ moar fire mages... I feed on your tears!!!!
Natsumi Oct 15th 2010 12:07AM
They are spicy and good on tacos. :D
Natsumi Oct 15th 2010 12:07AM
I like the part where my DPS went up as Destruction and they nerfed an ability I don't even have on my bars. lol I still have my 2k DPS increase for my Lock and Fire gets the bat hardcore lol
Oh, and yay for DPS increase for Warriors. Once I can get a working meter that doesn't cause performance issues I'll have to test it out.
Bahska Oct 15th 2010 7:18AM
Resto Druid nerf Inc. 15k hps on normal bql 10, keeping everyone alive with just WG also don't go below 35k mana unless I'm spamming RG or rejuv even then it's not bad.
My whole screen turns green when I hit WG it's amazing
Dregg Oct 15th 2010 9:08AM
So i took my fury warrior out for a test spin in icc last night, after the "fix". On avg, im doing about 2K less then before patch. On saurfang with 80% ARP i carried about 9K dps. I never broke 6900 last night. One thing i saw going over recount was the most dmg i was doing was from melee. Melee?? So the most dmg i do is just from swing my axes?? I've already cut HS out of my rot. it's not worth one rage point. My dps boost actually came when i created a cleave/ww/cleave rot. Third cleave crits almost every time for more dmg then a HS crit. Im not asking to have a dps of 12K over a mage, i get that. But i went #2 in dps to #6 in ten man. Our OT pally tank was behind me by only 1K. Hopefully a second adjustment is coming.
Mayhew Oct 15th 2010 3:02PM
My experience was quite a bit different from yours, I think. I was messing around soloing and in heroics last night, and it was a whole lot of fun. First off, I don't recommend taking HS out of your rotation unless you are completely rage-starved. I was getting HS crits of 10-12k last night, and since I'm sitting at close to 50% crit after the armor pen gem conversion, that happens frequently.
Also, I found myself pulling around 8k on single-target heroic bosses (so no ICC buff). Execute is hitting like a beast now, too. I got two crits in a row last night, 18.5k and 20.5k, so that's 39k dmg in 1.5 seconds, not counting white dmg. That was in heroics, too, so no ICC buff.
I am not sure why our experiences are so different, but for me, fury seems to be in a very good place, right now. I would encourage you to give it another chance -- maybe switch up your stat allocation a bit and see what impact it has.
jahwarrior Oct 15th 2010 9:20AM
i threw back to back 43k crits on my daily random run yesterday. it was beautiful while it lasted...
Dregg Oct 15th 2010 3:12PM
i will agree, execute is the only button to hit once it procs. I'm at about 38% crit and it was procing alot for about 27K. However, to me anyway, cleave, ww, cleave was resulting in crits on that last hit for close to 15K. HS, when it crits, is doing just under that, about 14K and with CD's and rage, the C/WWC rot seems to keep me less rage starved then even hitting HS once.
It could be i just need to learn better rage management but it does seem that im rage starved and rarely topped off on rage. Rage was never an issue before but now seems like i cannot keep it half full.
One thing i did notice was my hit rating needed some help, only at 16%, but still seems odd to see melee as my number one dmg bringer over HS. I'll work with it some more. Or maybe Blizz could just reduce the cost of HS and BT, lol.
Corvana Oct 15th 2010 7:08PM
The crab giveth, and the crab taketh away....
onegirlcreative Oct 18th 2010 6:16PM
my DK was also blood/dps before patch, now it's unholy/dps 2h wep. but i havet to ask for those of you who are unholy, are you in unholy or frost presence now? i have tried both and feel like frost presence works best, but if you recommend unholy pres, i will definitely give that a shot.
qxq_0o0 Nov 2nd 2010 8:53AM
ok