Patch 3.1.0 Class Changes and You, Part II
Posted on March 6th, 2009 by Raknathal under Efficiency Tips, General Tips, World of Warcraft
Last time, we took a sneak peak on the upcoming class changes in Blizzard’s newest patch, 3.1.0 for the Priest, Rogue, and Shaman (and we did a lot more digging for this article to make sure the info was as up-to-date as possible). Some of them change abilities that have been around in World of Warcraft since it was first released, and others are being added that some players feel are long overdue.
First, we have our Warlocks. This class will be receiving a hefty helping of new abilities, as well as a big dump of other abilities. First, some talents will have their ranks reduced to gain the benefits of more talents than before.
A nice bonus to Affliction Warlocks will be the removal of Siphon life as an ability. The effect, which was once active, is now passive and embedded into Corruption. Now, you will only have to cast one spell instead of two for a similar effect, unless it’s dispelled of course.
With this upcoming patch, many changes are occurring to armor and armor reduction that will affect Feral Druids, greatly. And to make up for these nerfs, Blizzard will buff Druids accordingly. A new ability that the Druids will recieve, is Savage Defense. Every time a Druid in Dire Bear form gets a melee critical strike, the Druid will gain a damage shield for the next melee attack against the Bear, that will absorb all damage equal to 25% of their attack power.
Another ability being changed by the armor reduction changes is Faerie Fire. Instead of a set number of Armor to be reduced, Faerie fire now reduces armor by 5%. As I will talk about in a little bit, this effect applies to Sunder Armor as well. Lastly, Cat form Druids will recieve a damage boost to their sustained damage in groups.
Warriors are also affected by the changes to Armor and Armor Reduction, and they also have many more changes in general. One of the nicer changes, is that Warriors will now gain rage from parrying, dodging, and from absorbing damage.
Now to Sunder Armor, this ability will now be similar to Faerie fire. It will only reduce the Enemy’s armor by 4% per application. Because of this, every boss will have their armor changed to reflect this.
The main reason for this change, is for Clothies and PvP. Our cloth-wearing friends, were having their armor reduced to 0 by sunder and faerie fire stacks and were getting demolished and obliterated in PvP. This change to Armor reduction fixes that problem, and hopefully everyone will last a bit longer.
Excited so far? You haven’t seen anything yet. Coming up in the final segment, the Mages, Hunters, Paladins, and Death Knights.
First!
I mean cool 20% armor Reduction and more rage stuff, <3 Warriors.
John,
Lifetime Hunter,Holy Pala, Prot War.
WARLOCKS FTW
It seems that in the newest patch 3.1.0 ALL HUNTERS PETS are gonna be the same in ARMOR,HEALTH, and DAMAGE – +5%, +5%, +5%. please advise, if i am reading it incorrectly.
Warlocks … the problem wasn’t the armor deal. Without any kind of damage reduction in PvP to keep our damage up, we would pretty much get destroyed unless you are in full pvp gear with as much resil as possible, even then, unless you are extremely skilled (or your opponent is really bad) it’s almost impossible to win in any 1v1 situation. That means, BG’s are useless, and there’s only a handful of Warlocks > 1900 rating.
Warlocks still have no real “burst damage” and that is why we will continue to die and be a burden on any 2v2/3v3/5v5 team we are lucky enough to be allowed in.
No mention on the resto druid situation :V Quite dissapointing.
All of it is nerfs anyway
Razortooth
That’s why I didn’t write about it.
-Raknathal
Le sigh. The change to Siphon Life is a nerf, not a buff. The only reason a raiding affliction lock would even want to take the ability now is because it’s a prerequisite to Shadow Mastery, which is a must. This change only buffs pvp. The Siphon Life ability will not add another debuff to the target for use with drain life/soul, and will not increase the damage of corruption, so taking it will give a net 0 increased dps.
Nor will it make the afflilocks rotation any easier. One GCD every 30 seconds was not the afflilocks problem. The duration on haunt was. Another possible fix was to make haunt an instant. Neither of these were fixed, and the loss of an affliction debuff translates as a straight nerf.
I also find it hard to credit that you made no mention of the specific changes to the destro and demo trees. At the moment it’s looking like Molten Core has changed from a low destro talent to a high demo talent. With nothing of note replacing that in the destro tree (pyroclasm is a joke) it seems that destro is going to take a dps hit.
Hybrid demo/destro specs are going to be hard to put together with the consolidation of the +hit talents in the affliction tree, and the addition of Decimation (execute style talent) at the same level as Demonic Tactics will further disincline people to choose a hybrid spec, rather choosing a dedicated demo spec to get all these talents. Destro still suffers high end bloat with backdraft (3 points), Empowered Imp (3 points) and Fire & Brimstone (5 points), the latter of which still has not been improved (reduced to 3 talents, 5/10/15% spell power to Immolate & a straight 4/8/12% increased conflag crit).
On the flip side it is possible now to make a hybrid spec that gets +28% crit from talents (o_O ) though +26% is more likely if you’re going for that spec so as to get 5/5 Emberstorm.
I agree. It looks like, if you like to PvP you can try as a warlock. Maybe it’ll be better than it is right now, but you’ll still probably get 3 shot and not help your team at all.
I guess we’ll have to continue being top 5 in DPS in 25 mans for a little while longer, unless we magically receive another overhaul. It seemed to work last time they did it.
@Sigoroth – what makes you think they will take away the debuff itself? When a paladin specs for Heart of the Crusader, that debuff is added seperately to the judgement effect, not just included in it. When a mage crits with Fireball and gets Ignite, it doesn’t just add itself into the burned debuff. So why, exactly, do you expect Siphon Life to not be added on as a seperate debuff that is simply applied by using Corruption?
I hope you go over the glyph changes / additions as well. Those are looking pretty sweet… Also, you forgot to mention the added effect for battle stance. It now reduces enemy armor by a set percentage.
<3 warr buffs
u sayed nothing about shammys………….QQ
honestly that wasnt really informative…
i could have stated everything that took u like 9 paragraphs to say in like 5 sentences. like u never go into depth about anything. like ur not even mentioning how for locks their changing alot about the talent tree, not just that some of their ranks have been reduced. u say that there getting new abilities but u never go into depth.
to summarize:
locks: no siphon life, corruption now heals for damg done
druids: fairy fire now reduces 5% of armor
have savage defense, which absorbs damage in bear form
kitty does more DPS
Warr: easier to gain rage
shudder reduces armor by 4%
Actually, championship 3v3 matches almost always consist of the warrior, warlock, druid combo. If you insist on thinking it’s not a viable pvp class you obviously don’t know how to pvp. Blizzcon’s 2008 finalist videos prove the point. Learn your class or reroll to what you think is so Godlike and stop sniveling.
As always thanks for the articles.
I am a hunter on Arthas my gear is not too bad but i am having a real hard time with dps ranking can you please help me dominate
Thanks.. Interesting – and always important to be aware!
Nice article, but being a druid, I think it may be beneficial to mention the HUGE improvements being made to Boomkins. such as the 1/2% stats added in Imp. MotW, Increased % in Intensity to make up for the nerfed mana regeneration from spirit, as well as the changes being made to Natures Grace (increases casting speed by 20% for 3 seconds instead of -.5 seconds on the next cast) which will greatly help those already stacking haste (as it no longer for the most part goes below the Global CD with Wrath)
What happened to the part III for Mages, Hunters, Paladins, and Death Knights?
I’t been a month, and where I have Hunter and a Death Knight was very interested in whats up before 3.1 comes out.
Thanks Bob