Final Changelog for Class Changes coming in 1.16.1

[Mekunekud]

I like most changes to shaman, but as others said, the enhancement changes are pretty underwhelming. I think enha shaman desperately needs some mana sustain, does not necessarily need to be Shamanistic Rage like in TBC, but some new talent would be cool to have. I also think he should be given dual wield, to boost up his dps a fair bit. I don't want to sound like a TBC andy but my opinion is that TBC did a lot of things right regarding enhancement and it's playstyle.

Shamans are getting Water Shield. The only problem is it'll be the mob version with no Mp/5 so there's no chance of it being worth it on bosses without a pulsing aura or soloing. Shamans should get a crit = shield proc talent instead of what Thunderhead is. Something like "melee crits cause you to activate your current shield effect and also restores a charge". Can also change the improved LS talent to improved shields to give more mana restore/healing as a tank.
Would provide a purgeable buff that gives some decent sustain to DPSing shamans, some survivability to tanking shamans and I can't see being too damaging to balance in any situation.

[Garish]

So melee hunter wont be really buffed? Not scaling melee skills no raptor reduced cd or traps in combat?

Inthink wolf aspect is much worse than monkey (mongoose needs to.dodge) and you cant shoot. For 155 ap dont worth it

!!!!! and where is lacerate?? just buff Wolf aspect melee AP and make mongoose bite active on parrys, this solves all problems for melee skills, and pls add lacerate, is a dream for every enthusiastic melee hunter.
melee skills being a % of the weapon damage is nice too.

[Garish]

Feedback and Discussions made after the release of the final changelog start after this message.

lacerate was taken out of the question?

[Allwynd01]

Feedback and Discussions made after the release of the final changelog start after this message.

lacerate was taken out of the question?

Looks like it was removed altogether from the list of changes.

[Geojak]

1. Make new Soc mana reg tied to the Soc damage proc, like 7. 5/15% of the damage.
After all Spriest mana reg also scales with dmasge done. The mana should come from the proc not the judgment to really fit paladin playstyle.

2. Make exocism usable against all targets and increased crit against undead/demons with a deep ret (atleast row 21 so you can't get holy shock too) talent instead of 2h specc or as new 31 talent.

3. Make crusader strike not a spamm spell ment for prots, they are already fine with the talent changes and spam spells are very unpaladinish.
Instead give it a 6 sec CD, allow it to proc stuff and do weapon dmasge, and change the holy damage debuff to a buff on the paladin instead.
Could also be considered as 31 ret talent.


And that's mostly it.

Lastly make the seal of crusader 3 talent points also affect crusader strike and consider introducing a talent or librsm that lowers holy strikes cd back to 8.

Soc and bok could Also become baseline if more space is needed in the ret talent tree. The current 31 stun talent in ret could be moved to protection like it was in early vanilla.

Oh and seal of crusader should give holy spellpower in addition to attackpower
This way it might finally find some usage for buffed aoe damage and holy shock, which will give paladins an interesting new rotation that wont be op as it can not boost other seals and judgements by design. An alternative idea would be making seal of crusader a cleave seal so paladin get a weapon based aoe capability besides consecration.

[Tasman]

1)I think crusader strike debuff on target should be replaced with buff for paladin. Something like stackable spell power buff, maybe 5% increased spell power that will last 10 seconds , after crusader strike was used, whitch can be stacked up to 5 times, resulting in 25% of spell power bonus (as an example). Also as stated in previous post, the idea of 6 sec cooldown with ability to deal weapon damage and proc seals will be good combination with spell power stackable buff.

2)Also ret have talent called «‎Pursuit of justice» on row 3. It looks pretty weak so I suggest to buff it a bit. Atleast up to 10% of movement speed and add some extra bonus to it, maybe +2% of chance to hit with melee weapons and spells or as an alternative 4% for dodge (with 2 talent points spent in it).

[Reploidrocsa]

2)Also ret have talent called «‎Pursuit of justice» on row 3. It looks pretty weak so I suggest to buff it a bit. Atleast up to 10% of movement speed and add some extra bonus to it, maybe +2% of chance to hit with melee weapons and spells or as an alternative 4% for dodge (with 2 talent points spent in it).

Prot paladins would LOVE 4% extra dodge

[Mikeloss]

Hello there! Once again big thanks to the developers for making this server a UNIQUE experience. I have no technical depth on the Talents/Spells mechanics and therefor can not say too much about how these changes affect the balance of the game and so on. What I can say is this:
Not even Blizzard could please all its player base. They could not make a perfect game and they have been at it for almost 20 years. People come and go as they please and so should they. I believe all these changes show how much love you have for the game and your passion for continuing to tell stories of Azeroth while making the game feel fresh, new and exiting. Those of us who support this vision will carry on and make sure you have the needed feedback to make this possible.

With that said a big thanks and round of applause for those who DO HAVE the technical depth on the Talents/Spells mechanics and therefor can say much about how these changes affect the balance of the game and help the developers achieve their goals.

Much Love,

Mikeloss

[Gattare]

Hot bloody damn! And here I thought we'd be lucky to have enhance shamans get two new keystone talents rather than 2H Axes/Maces and prot paladins get a proper taunt.

Paladin Changes

Most of these changes as a paladin main are YES. OH MY LORD YES.
Consecration being baseline was desperately needed for talent diversity; Prot Paladins and Ret Paladins can actually justify going deeper into Ret and Prot, respectively. Crusader Strike's...interesting, I remember that being from the beta like Holy Strike. Seems like it'd be pretty nice to have a filler spell while leveling, though I wonder how much it'd come into use in raids, especially if the debuff limit isn't high on the priority list for getting lifted anytime soon.

Holy Shock's neat, the cooldown being reduced to 20 seconds like in TBC, damage being increased by 35% is nice (can't believe it couldn't have just be rounded from 496 to 500 though smh ) and the healing being increased by...90? Damn, that's a lot, albeit justified considering how little it was used in raids. Now it could be a proper healing cooldown, though maybe the healing would be a bit much in PvP?

I'm really thankful that Redoubt and Reckoning aren't based off of critical strikes anymore, Defense is actually gonna be useful again, Shield Specialization regenerating mana is a great change, I wouldn't have done it any differently, Blessing of Sanctuary / Holy Shield being 2 rows higher is great for leveling tanks and hybrid builds alike, and holy Jesus, we actually have a proper Taunt now.
However...I think it's really weird to have the taunt be locked behind a talent, for such an essential ability for Prot Paladins. Not to mention that having only 1/3 or 2/3 points in the talent meaning that your Taunt working is literally up to random chance just sounds really bad. Maybe at least the talent could instead influence the length of the Taunt, so that if baseline it's 0 seconds, each rank of the talent increases the Taunt length by 1 second up to 3 seconds. Or baseline it could be 1 second and then the talent increases it to up to 4 seconds. And Ardent Defender...I get that it's a talent from TBC, but it doesn't really make sense as a rank 7 talent in my opinion; here the health and damage values are twisted; in TBC it's 20% damage reduction while under 35% health, but here it's 35% damage reduction when under 20% health. I don't know about you, but if you're getting under 20% health, that sounds like a death sentence. If it weren't for the fact that the other 21-point talents aren't that good, it sounds like a talent that I wouldn't hesitate to skip, but maybe Laughadin has a different perspective on that.

Shaman Changes

2H Weapons and Parry being made baseline, like Consecration, was something that was very much overdue and fantastic. But the 11-point keystone talent in Enhancement is kinda baffling. Lightning Shield being able to be cast on allies is an interesting concept on paper, but to me it sounds like A) that would really clutter up Shaman's rotation if they have to constantly cast it on allies, and B) it just really does not seem like it has the impact that all the other keystone talents have. Many classes get a whole new ability, the other shamans get Clearcasting or a much wider totem radius, and Enhancement Shamans...can cast (or maybe have to cast) Lightning Shield on other folks. Wooo. The way I see it, keep Lightning Shield exclusive to Shamans, and have something else made specifically for shaman tanks as the 11-point keystone talent. Could be cool if maybe the 11-point talent unlocked some shield enhancements, like Rockbiter Shield, Flametongue Shield, etc. that have some special benefits for tanks that could be chosen from, like increased armor and block, flame resist and a Thorns effect, maybe even getting an extra attack upon a successful block for Windfury Shield, stuff like that.

Bloodlust sounds pretty neat, I think Enhancement having a support buff like that is great, especially since it ties in with what Shamans in Warcraft 3 could do. Though I think it'd feel pretty bittersweet in its current state, as it shares the same setting as Power Infusion and Innervate in a group setting the Shaman themselves is never really gonna be able to benefit from it; there's other classes that just flat-out do much more DPS and it's best to buff them rather than being able to lift your own DPS up. I think it'd be cool if targeting a friendly target with the buff applied Bloodlust to both them as well as yourself, so that both you and the other person can revel in that fun frenzy.

Shaman racial spells is an absolutely awesome concept. I feel conflicted as to how many caveats Hex has; a long cooldown, only being a partial CC (in that enemies can still attack under it), and a very short duration. If the duration were raised to at least 15 seconds, and maybe the cooldown lowered to 2 minutes or so, I think it'd be super rad. And since Spirit Link already sounds kinda niche, I don't think it has to have a 10-minute cooldown to make it even more niche; maybe 5 minutes or so. However, nitpicks aside, this is really bloody neat to see as someone who used to main Shaman for 12 years.

Mage Changes

Personally, I think a wee bit more should've been done for Arcane Missiles; the current effect for 5/5 Imp Arcane Missiles should be made baseline so that Arcane Missiles serves an actual purpose for non-Arcane Mages, with something else instead for the Arcane Missiles talent; it could be a simple damage buff, but a neat twist might be to have the Arcane Missiles spell increase its damage for every missiles that lands on the target, so each missile could do 5% more damage (additively) than the last. And it'd be neat if each missile had a separate chance to proc chance-on-spell effects like Clearcasting rather than the whole spell having one chance, because that could actually make actual Arcane have a real purpose for mana efficiency. And Brilliance Aura seems like a weird inclusion; it's cool that it'd be bringing something in from Warcraft 3 for mages, and if Brilliance Aura could be used only by mages that are going the Arcane Missiles route, that'd be one thing. But the Arcane tree is mainly designed in Vanilla as a general utility tree for the other two specs of Fire and Frost, and those frost mages who already use 31/0/20 as their ideal talent build could just pick up Brilliance Aura and provide even more power to the group for just doing what they already do.

Other Changes

There's not quite as much for me to say about the other classes. Druid's changes all sound pretty fine to me; I kinda wonder if there will be a glyph for those who don't necessarily want to have to use Tree of Life, maybe a green equivalent of the Glyph of Stars with leaves and such surrounding the player (not to say I don't like the cool little giving tree though )

Everything else looks pretty decent at a first glance; the only part I find questionable is why a lot of these new abilities are only available starting at level 56-60. Why not have these introduced earlier into the leveling experience like every other ability in the game is?

Reckoning aren't based off of critical strikes anymore? I don't think they ever mentioned that.

[Garish]

Feedback and Discussions made after the release of the final changelog start after this message.

lacerate was taken out of the question?

Looks like it was removed altogether from the list of changes.

my melee orc hunter dream is dead, and im in mourning...

[Witch101]

Could you please shorten the cooldown for Hurricane. This would open up druid'a AoE potential.

[Volkyte]

forgive me for my ignorance, so basically warrior is getting an extra slam usable while moving? :O

[Severla]

So melee hunter wont be really buffed? Not scaling melee skills no raptor reduced cd or traps in combat?

Inthink wolf aspect is much worse than monkey (mongoose needs to.dodge) and you cant shoot. For 155 ap dont worth it

Had been eagerly awaiting to see how Lacerate would scale.

And it didnt make the cut, oof. RIP.

[Allwynd01]

lacerate was taken out of the question?

Looks like it was removed altogether from the list of changes.

my melee orc hunter dream is dead, and im in mourning...

Yes, I've been waiting for this update to release since the first days of January, I was really excited. Then it was delayed to "before the end of January", now we can safely say it's almost the end of February and the update is nowhere in sight, what's more the most core change for Hunters in this update has been removed.

I'm very disappointed, both that it was removed and that they felt they should not release the update even if it had bugs and imbalances and let people test it and provide feedback. Also, who decides what goes in or out? Is there a dedicated testing team that I'm not aware of or is there is some heated discussion where users vote and I somehow don't know it exists?

I simply don't see how a melee Hunter can be anything close to viable even for leveling up and fighting regular mobs for questing without Lacerate, which was a very needed melee active ability to expand the Hunter's melee arsenal. I decided since January to play my Hunter in melee only, I even sold my bow and had just relied on a melee weapon and frankly the amount of abilities of a 16 level Hunter who relies on melee only is a complete joke. I also learned that Mongoose Bite is quite useless too, because if one mob triggers the ability, you can't use it on another mob if you and your pet are fighting multiple mobs and you decide for your pet to fight one mob and you another just to speed things up.

[Linxoid]

Yes, I've been waiting for this update to release since the first days of January, I was really excited. Then it was delayed to "before the end of January", now we can safely say it's almost the end of February and the update is nowhere in sight, what's more the most core change for Hunters in this update has been removed.

I'm very disappointed, both that it was removed and that they felt they should not release the update even if it had bugs and imbalances and let people test it and provide feedback. Also, who decides what goes in or out? Is there a dedicated testing team that I'm not aware of or is there is some heated discussion where users vote and I somehow don't know it exists?

+ 1

[Raukodor]

The biggest peoblems of melee hunters

His melee skills dont scale (a naxx geared hunter will do same damage with mongoose/lacerate. Raptor only depends of weapon damage). And winglip... Well you know

Very very few melee arsenal. You usually only use raptor (only real.skill every 6 sec). Mongoose /counter does crap damage and you need to dodge/parry a attack

If you arent tanking you only use 1 of.your 3 skills...

Traps in melee? Yes. But again dont scale and need feing death to cast in combat so have a much longer cd in combat


I play melee hunter for fun. Viable? Of course not.

[Mekunekud]

The only way I can think of that Hunters would get a decent "melee" buff, tho nowhere near competitive, would be to make Aspect of the Wolf make Mongoose Bite a useable skill in any situation and traps castable in combat at the cost of any ranged skill upto 10 seconds after changing aspect to balance out the fact it's a melee aspect and to prevent hunters just aspect changing straight to Hawk and preventing any kind of kite from casters. Possibly making Serpent Sting removed from the deadzone as well.

[Tasman]

Continuing my thoughts on paladin talents.
3)Ret talent, «‎Vindication» row 3. Talent gives debuff that decreases strenght and agility for 15%, whitch makes it useless against casters. I suggest 3 variants of how it can be improved:
1)Debuff will affect not only strenght and agility, but also intelect and spirit. Resulting in 15% decrease of strenght, agility, intelect and spirit.
2)Debuff decreases all targets stats by 10% whitch means basic (strenght, intelect, agility etc.) and secondary (dodge, parry, spell power, crit etc.).
3)Debuff decreases all damage done by target (physical and magical) by 10% and also decreases efficiency of its healing spells by 20%.

[Allwynd01]

The only way I can think of that Hunters would get a decent "melee" buff, tho nowhere near competitive, would be to make Aspect of the Wolf make Mongoose Bite a useable skill in any situation and traps castable in combat at the cost of any ranged skill upto 10 seconds after changing aspect to balance out the fact it's a melee aspect and to prevent hunters just aspect changing straight to Hawk and preventing any kind of kite from casters. Possibly making Serpent Sting removed from the deadzone as well.

I agree that, but technically, it sounds hard to implement.

The way I understand it, Mongoose Bite becomes available when you dodge, there are two ways to make the skill always available:

- make it so you dodge 80-90% time, but this will make you immortal, so it's not an option
- make the skill not require dodge, but instead works on a cooldown.

[Garish]

as a melee hunter u can do a dual tank leveling with a bear or boar pet, using all your dots on a mob and make your pet aggro, than pull another mob and put your dots (lacerate with bloodlust and wolf aspect greatly improve this build tho) than melee the mobs to death.

Melee hunter only needs 2 things
1. buff in melee dmg skills with wolf aspect on (maybe hitting with both weapons with 100% dmg)
2. moongose bite working on parrys (deflection talent supports that)
Plus tip:
Bleeding crescent axe is your core item at lvl 30
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=6738/bleeding-crescent

[Garish]

as a melee hunter u can do a dual tank leveling with a bear or boar pet, using all your dots on a mob and make your pet aggro, than pull another mob and put your dots (lacerate with bloodlust and wolf aspect greatly improve this build tho) than melee the mobs to death.

Melee hunter only needs 2 things
1. buff in melee dmg skills(with wolf aspect on,maybe hitting with both weapons with 100% dmg)
2. moongose bite working on parrys (deflection talent supports that)
Plus tip:
Bleeding crescent axe is your core item at lvl 30
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=6738/bleeding-crescent

[Ravielsk]

I am very thankful for the teams willingness to to make some serious changes to the classes. Adding new content to the game while keeping the old borked classes would just feel like wasted effort. Especially the paladin changes are very much welcome.

But if I am getting this right these changes are not yet implemented on the live server as that runs on the 1.16.0 client and not 1.16.1. Did I understand that right?

[Amarath]

With these changes im coming to TWow. This was what was holding me back. I played classic, twice on retail and a few times on pservers. A new starting zone is not enough for me to play it again. Now classic as a paladin, shaman, and others sure ill sign up for that.

[Amarath]

I am very thankful for the teams willingness to to make some serious changes to the classes. Adding new content to the game while keeping the old borked classes would just feel like wasted effort. Especially the paladin changes are very much welcome.

But if I am getting this right these changes are not yet implemented on the live server as that runs on the 1.16.0 client and not 1.16.1. Did I understand that right?

Yeah its not live and the current conflict i guess is causing more delay. They did send an update in the discord saying so, but they roll out patches slowly after all it is turtle wow :P ... i wouldn't count of them shortly, but they could come.

[Amarath]

...
The big question is however, the fact that you are hinting at the concept of increasing the debuff limit with rogue but not giving a clear answer? If you are increasing the debuff cap then alot of my concerns are mitigated. However, if you are not doing so then that still has the issue of Crusader Strike not being worth stacking. The idea of using Crusader Strike to buff your damage + opening up your judgment slot for Light/Wisdom is definitely an idea I enjoy, but i'm concerned about the debuff slot economy in regards to this concept.
...

Overall, I love the concept overall and I'm excited to try it once it's properly implemented, but my main concern is how crusader strike is going to be possibly catered too justify it's debuff slot and how one could use that to help ret paladin have a niche in a raid setting.

They almost have to do this or spriest cannot use VE to mana battery. I mean with buff cap increased Shadow priests could easily be useful (TBC players love them so will you). But without VE they are just bad dps. (I guess the changes help the 1 in raid used for Shadow Weaving...)

[Jombo]

Question about Arcane Brilliance aura. In WC3 it was an actual aura. Since you still use that name, why not make it an actual aura instead of a 30 min buff? Also it would be less annoying to use and stand out as a new feature in a positive way.

[Keridan66]

Any information, when this changes to classes and talents are going to be done on the server? At least I'd love to know if it will be this month or not.

[Allwynd01]

Any information, when this changes to classes and talents are going to be done on the server? At least I'd love to know if it will be this month or not.

Probably never.

[Nartt]

Any information, when this changes to classes and talents are going to be done on the server? At least I'd love to know if it will be this month or not.

+1

[Sinrek]

We're currently testing some spells and trying to come up with sensible values, so, as you might've imagine it takes time.

Stay tuned for the announcement. I'm sure nobody wants to have a patch with tons of new bugs, right?

[Witch101]

Please shorten Hurricane's cooldown. Thanks.

[Olgah]

That's a LOT of mana for a single target "somewhat" CC on the Troll shaman racial skill.

While the other two gets a full 20 seconds duration on their own, the hex *Which would be really only useful on caster-type mobs or players* assuming you can't dispel it. You'll rather prefer a mage to cast Polymorph and that'll be better, in fact any other CC is just overall better, there's no need for the 4 seconds hex.

The troll one really needs a change, it's very underwhelming, and 21% base mana cost it's a LOT for it.

I'll rather them have a Serpent Ward instead, that last the full 20 seconds duration and deals some chaotic single target spicy damage than the Hex if we're talking on voodoo-ish-shadow hunter type of racial for troll shamans.

IMO the hex as it is there, is rather weak and unneeded, in comparison to the other two who seems to have a better usability.

[Zenjarla]

Warrior change

While i agree that warriors are silly in vanilla there was 1 change in TBC that i think would be a great addition in classic, and that is the support role of arms warrior by giving them the blood frenzy talent:
"Your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities also increase all physical damage caused to that target by 4%."

Whit this talent it was desirable to not only have fury warriors but an arms that actually could bring something more then just dmg to the raid. That and also the nature of TBC (And even more in vanilla) where some bosses needed more then 1 tank, the arms (because of the nature of his talent tree) had no issue filling the spot as a back up tank. It also created a spot for a 2h dmg dealer that is basically none existed and almost all 2h wpns are consider pvp wpns in vanilla.

A big issue is that you dont want to give this to warriors for free in their pvp spec, but by the nautre of having it in the end of the talent tree ppl would need to make the choice of ether having 5 points in enrage or 4% dmg... which no pvper would ever consider taking since thats 4% vs 10%.

But i also realise that buffing physical dmg for vanilla might not the best direction since their overall dmg scale to good, and the fact that Arms in TBC have a rotation with slam, and slam in vanilla is not the same, specially since you cant reach improved slam (unless you lower it) while having mortal strike and this talent.

I know this might be to much but as a fan of support warrior build in tbc i hope maybe it could inspire a future look over. Vanilla have the best world, but tbc brings soo many more fun and unique builds and i think many forget this role of an arms support.

[Tasman]

About paladin changes.
I have some ideas about alternative version of taunt for paladins. Also it can be fine addition to seal taunt that devs introduced in new talent trees. This will be spell that can be trained at 16 lvl if it will be main taunt. Or on 30 lvl as secondary mass taunt but with much longer cooldown. (Current version portrayed as main taunt).
Orb of Light
3% of base mana
30 yard range.
15 sec cooldown
Instant
Hurls an orb that explodes in area targeted by paladin, taunting all enemies that are present in radius of 5 yards.

[Allwynd01]

Melee Hunters should be able to equip shields.