Coupled with the Dragon Soul patch hitting the PTR, Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street has posted a blog on the upcoming balance changes for classes. The changes are mostly mechanical at this point, as they have yet "finished enough testing to be confident in their benchmark damage, healing, and tanking numbers for 4.3".
» SourceExplanation of 4.3 Balance Changes, Part One
Melee DPS
Overall, we think melee DPS in dungeons and raids is still too low. We think melee DPS is fine in PvP, and we think melee DPS is competitive against ranged specs against target dummies, but in actual encounters with all of their moving pieces, melee falls behind. To attempt to adjust for this imbalance, we have improved the benefit to attack power given by the various raid buffs (Blessing of Might et al.) to melee only. Hunter DPS is fine, or even high in 4.2, so we didn’t want this buff to extend to them, which is why the AP benefit is now 20% for melee attacks but still 10% for ranged attacks.
Paladin
We changed Seal of Insight to no longer return 15% base mana and then changed Judgment of the Pure to provide mana regeneration so that Holy paladins would not need to Judge every eight seconds. With these changes, they will want to Judge every 30 seconds, which seems more reasonable. Judging every eight seconds is hard to ask someone who is also targeting players a lot to heal them.
We made several changes to Holy Radiance to make it a cast time spell. We felt like Holy paladins couldn’t go into a group healing mode because Holy Radiance had a long cooldown and in the absence of a cast time, didn’t compete with any other spell. With this change (and the Light of Dawn change below), paladins can opt for an AE healing “rotation” (insofar as healers can ever have a rotation) of using Holy Radiance -> Light of Dawn instead of Holy Light et al. -> Word of Glory.
Several Holy talents changed to support the change to Holy Radiance, such as allowing it to benefit from Illuminated Healing, Clarity of Purpose, and Infusion of Light. It didn’t make sense for Speed of Light to be triggered by a cast-time spell, so we caused the Paragon of Virtue talent to lower the cooldown on Divine Protection, so that Holy wouldn’t lose quite so much functionality of Speed of Light. Speed of Light has definitely been nerfed compared to 4.2, but we feel it’s an acceptable change given the entire package.
We reversed the glyph for Light of Dawn. Instead of providing an additional target to Light of Dawn, the glyph now reduces the number of targets but increases the throughput. Light of Dawn was not a very useful spell in 10-player raids or similar small groups, like Arena teams. This glyph should allow paladins to tailor Light of Dawn for their group size.
Shaman
We made changes to Wind Shear to restrict the short cooldown version to the DPS shaman (who have the Reverberation talent) and make Restoration less potent at interrupting. We think Restoration is currently too useful in PvP relative to other healers because of a potent, ranged interrupt. We don’t think this nerf will have major PvE ramifications.
We changed Mental Quickness and Flametongue Weapon to hopefully put a nail in the coffin of Enhancement shaman using spellpower weapons. We want Enhancement using melee weapons. Players who have been doing so should notice no change in their DPS. Players who have been using caster weapons or armor will find that gear is no longer useful to them.
Elemental’s AE damage was still not competitive with the rotations of other DPS specs, so we buffed Earthquake and removed the cooldown on Chain Lightning. These two spells should be the bulk of Elemental’s AE DPS, while spreading Flame Shocks should be an Enhancement mechanic (see below).
We also tried to improve Enhancement’s AE. In this case, the DPS was fairly competitive, but applying the AE was a headache with having to tab through multiple targets to spread Flame Shocks. Enhance can now use Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock (and the bonus granted from Improved Lava Lash has been baked into the base Lava Lash ability, so Enhance should not suffer any DPS loss as a consequence).
Editor's Analysis
I can't say I disagree with any of the changes listed. I'm especially fond of the melee dps buffs, the paladin AoE tweaks (and less judging needed) and the tweaks to Death Knight tanking. There's also some Holy Priest and Druid changes listed in the blog, as well as more details on Shamans, especially Resto in PvP. It's a good read, and I'm looking forward to reading Part Two, which will have more "final" changes.
Links
Battle.Net Blog - Blog Post
» SourceExplanation of 4.3 Balance Changes, Part One
Melee DPS
Overall, we think melee DPS in dungeons and raids is still too low. We think melee DPS is fine in PvP, and we think melee DPS is competitive against ranged specs against target dummies, but in actual encounters with all of their moving pieces, melee falls behind. To attempt to adjust for this imbalance, we have improved the benefit to attack power given by the various raid buffs (Blessing of Might et al.) to melee only. Hunter DPS is fine, or even high in 4.2, so we didn’t want this buff to extend to them, which is why the AP benefit is now 20% for melee attacks but still 10% for ranged attacks.
Paladin
We changed Seal of Insight to no longer return 15% base mana and then changed Judgment of the Pure to provide mana regeneration so that Holy paladins would not need to Judge every eight seconds. With these changes, they will want to Judge every 30 seconds, which seems more reasonable. Judging every eight seconds is hard to ask someone who is also targeting players a lot to heal them.
We made several changes to Holy Radiance to make it a cast time spell. We felt like Holy paladins couldn’t go into a group healing mode because Holy Radiance had a long cooldown and in the absence of a cast time, didn’t compete with any other spell. With this change (and the Light of Dawn change below), paladins can opt for an AE healing “rotation” (insofar as healers can ever have a rotation) of using Holy Radiance -> Light of Dawn instead of Holy Light et al. -> Word of Glory.
Several Holy talents changed to support the change to Holy Radiance, such as allowing it to benefit from Illuminated Healing, Clarity of Purpose, and Infusion of Light. It didn’t make sense for Speed of Light to be triggered by a cast-time spell, so we caused the Paragon of Virtue talent to lower the cooldown on Divine Protection, so that Holy wouldn’t lose quite so much functionality of Speed of Light. Speed of Light has definitely been nerfed compared to 4.2, but we feel it’s an acceptable change given the entire package.
We reversed the glyph for Light of Dawn. Instead of providing an additional target to Light of Dawn, the glyph now reduces the number of targets but increases the throughput. Light of Dawn was not a very useful spell in 10-player raids or similar small groups, like Arena teams. This glyph should allow paladins to tailor Light of Dawn for their group size.
Shaman
We made changes to Wind Shear to restrict the short cooldown version to the DPS shaman (who have the Reverberation talent) and make Restoration less potent at interrupting. We think Restoration is currently too useful in PvP relative to other healers because of a potent, ranged interrupt. We don’t think this nerf will have major PvE ramifications.
We changed Mental Quickness and Flametongue Weapon to hopefully put a nail in the coffin of Enhancement shaman using spellpower weapons. We want Enhancement using melee weapons. Players who have been doing so should notice no change in their DPS. Players who have been using caster weapons or armor will find that gear is no longer useful to them.
Elemental’s AE damage was still not competitive with the rotations of other DPS specs, so we buffed Earthquake and removed the cooldown on Chain Lightning. These two spells should be the bulk of Elemental’s AE DPS, while spreading Flame Shocks should be an Enhancement mechanic (see below).
We also tried to improve Enhancement’s AE. In this case, the DPS was fairly competitive, but applying the AE was a headache with having to tab through multiple targets to spread Flame Shocks. Enhance can now use Lava Lash to spread Flame Shock (and the bonus granted from Improved Lava Lash has been baked into the base Lava Lash ability, so Enhance should not suffer any DPS loss as a consequence).
Editor's Analysis
I can't say I disagree with any of the changes listed. I'm especially fond of the melee dps buffs, the paladin AoE tweaks (and less judging needed) and the tweaks to Death Knight tanking. There's also some Holy Priest and Druid changes listed in the blog, as well as more details on Shamans, especially Resto in PvP. It's a good read, and I'm looking forward to reading Part Two, which will have more "final" changes.
Links
Battle.Net Blog - Blog Post
