Patch 1.17.2 — Class & Gameplay Changes

[amanagor]

Please take a look into Fury Warrs T3 set. It's very mediocre compared to for example ret paladins set.

Lets look at the wrist as an example:

Fury warr t3 wrist , 20 str18stam 1%haste
Ret pala t3 wrist , 19str,14stam, 2%haste 1%hit

???

This is one of many pieces who are undertuned for fury. I have not even mentioned the poor set bonuses/lack of crit we are missing, and others have. Also spirit and raw attackpower for fury ? Give us strength and stamina like others get.

The reason turtle does this is because warrior scales very well with gear, so its an easy way of nerfing warrior raid damage without thinking about it too much. Warrior is already topping the meters, it doesnt need anything more.

[Grinface]

From a Subtlety rogue's perspective: I'm really happy about the buffs to finisher moves, since it was always a tad bit annoying to wait for that one extra energy tick just to get that remaining 5 energy to do my finisher. Also Tricks of the Trade buff is greatly appreciated. It always felt like a struggle to get the second buff stack at the start and I just had to hope that RNG was on my side with four combo points spent to hopefully trigger the effect.

I, however, think that Sub rogue could use a little more buffs. Mark for Death feels bad to use; the duration is so short that if you blink once it's over AND the cooldown feels too long for such a short effect. Maybe from balance standpoint the numbers are good and buffing it too much would make it too strong. But right now it just feels underwhelming. Especially when it misses. Maybe decrease the amount of increased bonus damage dealt to the target from 15% to 10% and double the duration, make it guaranteed to hit and/or reduce the cooldown from 3 to 2 minutes? Or make the debuff effect guaranteed to be applied even if you miss the melee attack and won't get the combo points.

I'd love to see some other smaller buffs here and there for Sub rogue. Not to make it deal as much damage as Combat and Assassination rogues but to feel more impactful and utilities more useful. Make Sub rogues feel good and useful enough that every raid would want to have at least one in their raids.

[Acestein]

The bow for the night elf priest does not appear to function. I only have a message that sais: "Must have a wand equiped".

I have a bow, and arrows.

you get a quest at level 20

Thank you!

[Domeng]

The casting distance of Holy Shock should be increased to 40 yards. Melee Paladin is very interesting, but the operation is too complicated. So it's not as good as traditional gameplay. There is no difference in the treatment effect. It is meaningful and in line with the healing characteristics of paladins to continuously increase healing effects or critical strike rates during melee attacks

[Mao1989]

Paladin: Melee healer is awful and stupid design.
Dev: Ok. Melee healer is underperforming. Lets give it some more buff and make it cooooooool

What a disappoint change.... Oh, yes, ret pal get nerfed again. T3 set bonus - delete damage bonus of exorcism and make it to only reduce cooldown. The best part is exorcism only can be used to attack undead and demons and it is useless on other mobs. And it will apply on ret as well. Nice design......Why dont you just delete current rework or make it back to 1.12? At least, we can enjoy some old and happy style? If you do not know how to make it better. Just keep it unchanged. easy?

Besides, Holy Shield CD increased from 10 sec to 12 sec...what? lol? Do you know what you are doing?

[Ulukay]

Night Elf Priest: Casting a spell resets your bow's shot timer.

Seriously? This is ridiculous.

[Noephix]

Cc1 compressed the amount of talent points in feral tree so it was easier to pick up all the relevant talents for a spec. Cc2 has added so many new talents there's now more talents than before cc1 compression. Why?

Because you either go clown cat or powershred cat. Not both.

[Wethand]

can you make Crystal charges (https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=11566) useable in raid/dungeons please, kind of annoying seeing everything immune to its damage

[Beest]

DRUID

How am i suposed to use my T3/dodge(tank) set when even in dungeons i cannot get enough threat?
The 20-11-2024 "downgrade" feels like we're back at the start where we struggle to keep threat and thus forced to wair DPS gear as tank when we just want to wair dodge gear wich is our only avoidance but are punished for using it.

[Shockoladetwo]

DRUID

How am i suposed to use my T3/dodge(tank) set when even in dungeons i cannot get enough threat?
The 20-11-2024 "downgrade" feels like we're back at the start where we struggle to keep threat and thus forced to wair DPS gear as tank when we just want to wair dodge gear wich is our only avoidance but are punished for using it.

I completely agree with you, making the talent CD from 6 to 9 seconds (and removing vampirism, which also produced some threat because of the hidden self-heal)
Then swipe dmg and threat reduced.
Savage bite dmg and threat reduced.... and as "reward" we got 1min less cd on frenzied regeneration which is completely useless. This 1 minute reduce does NOTHING at all.
They could have improved the healing a little more by 1% or maybe 2% and kept the CD on 6minutes, which was fine as it was same cd like berserk.
I don't know who gets this "great ideas" but who ever is in charge for it should get the opinion of someone actively playing druid tank and dps. And not some random people who might "think" it's great to do that.

[Possum]

Cc1 compressed the amount of talent points in feral tree so it was easier to pick up all the relevant talents for a spec. Cc2 has added so many new talents there's now more talents than before cc1 compression. Why?

Because you either go clown cat or powershred cat. Not both.

Still begs the question of why though. Why add all these new talents to feral so you can pick between "clown cat" and "powershred cat" when the feral talent tree was already catering to 2 completely different playstyles (bear + cat). Did the devs think druids needed another dps choice? Maybe a dev liked the idea of cat bleeds and just tried to hamfist it into the talent tree to see what would happen, because that's a good way to implement design ideas? Maybe the devs think it's really high-level gameplay when a spec designed for 2 different playstyles (cat+bear) only allows you to pick enough talents to do good at one of those playstyles and completely handicap you in the other? (Seriously, you miss so many of the important bear talents selecting the new cat bleed ones, you can't even get feral charge if you're going all-in on the cat bleed build).

It's a bit depressing how chaotic the changes from CC2 are. They feel disjointed and like they are pulling everything apart, not binding it together firmer. A stark contrast from CC1.

[Gurkh]

I know some people aren't the biggest fans on Blade Furry nerf for Rogues, but I get the vision of trying to make Rogues the best single target DPS for boss fights. But if that's the vision then more scaling is definitely needed.

Rogues still fall behind multiple other classes when it comes to single target damage and the scaling on our finishers and poisons are still too low. A 5 combo point Evis hits for lower than a warrior pressing one button at times.

[Manowar76]

There’s some good or great ideas for cc2 but some implementations are messy or “out of nowhere” imo. And some of these patch changes don’t help, seem to be going in the wrong direction, or focusing on weird things. Something something ptr. Although I’m glad at least some of the original proposed changes were reversed because of feedback. :D

In general, REMOVING some key parts of vanilla wow (damage on holy shock being the obvious example, without any replacement to the style, to justify melee holy) does not fit what vanilla *PLUS* should be (and also killing fun playstyles). Same with removing shadow oil scaling all together, and whatever else.
The changes to bloodthirst seemed unnecessary and don’t make much sense to me, the other version was a nicer concept. Don't need to mention the upset paladins and druids. Rogue changes seem nice enough.

Rather than doing things to priest/discipline tree that people have suggested, the focus was put on bows and starshards for SOME reason? Problems like

- smite lacking good spec specific support abilities
- making chastise haste buff useful/last longer or even reworking the entire spell
- searing light (bigger mana reduction being the main one)
- mana issues
- no smite tier sets other than 2.5 and lack of *at least some* general +damage/healing on a lot of those items
- removing reduced/no threat on holy nova which was a key part of its spec identity (maybe scaling more with the threat reduction talent if someone wants to keep the threat for some reason I dono)
- spiritual healing feeling *too* required to heal (doesn't help if smite is supposed to be an off-healer of sorts. as well as the mana issues)
- resurgent shield being behind too many points or whatever, etc. It being buffed was kinda cool at least.

- And for shadow, vamp embrace having a cast time
- pain spike feeling pointless (low damage, maybe it could proc spirit tap if the mob dies within 5 seconds of using it or be redesigned in some way)
- weird itemization for shadow on its tier gear (too much crit and hit).

I’m hoping the next balance patch fixes some of these issues and is an improvement over this one :D happy holidays

[Harkus]

So Starshards went from one meme ability to another? I have to wonder what the point was... Also spells reseting nelf priest autoshot is lame, could have had a cool playstyle where you wait for a bit after casting to shoot and maybe get some mana back but nope... I highly doubt either ability would have been close to the meta in their previous states...

[Tibi64400]

There’s some good or great ideas for cc2 but some implementations are messy or “out of nowhere” imo. And some of these patch changes don’t help, seem to be going in the wrong direction, or focusing on weird things. Something something ptr. Although I’m glad at least some of the original proposed changes were reversed because of feedback. :D

In general, REMOVING some key parts of vanilla wow (damage on holy shock being the obvious example, without any replacement to the style, to justify melee holy) does not fit what vanilla *PLUS* should be (and also killing fun playstyles). Same with removing shadow oil scaling all together, and whatever else.
The changes to bloodthirst seemed unnecessary and don’t make much sense to me, the other version was a nicer concept. Don't need to mention the upset paladins and druids. Rogue changes seem nice enough.

Rather than doing things to priest/discipline tree that people have suggested, the focus was put on bows and starshards for SOME reason? Problems like

- smite lacking good spec specific support abilities
- making chastise haste buff useful/last longer or even reworking the entire spell
- searing light (bigger mana reduction being the main one)
- mana issues
- no smite tier sets other than 2.5 and lack of *at least some* general +damage/healing on a lot of those items
- removing reduced/no threat on holy nova which was a key part of its spec identity (maybe scaling more with the threat reduction talent if someone wants to keep the threat for some reason I dono)
- spiritual healing feeling *too* required to heal (doesn't help if smite is supposed to be an off-healer of sorts. as well as the mana issues)
- resurgent shield being behind too many points or whatever, etc. It being buffed was kinda cool at least.

- And for shadow, vamp embrace having a cast time
- pain spike feeling pointless (low damage, maybe it could proc spirit tap if the mob dies within 5 seconds of using it or be redesigned in some way)
- weird itemization for shadow on its tier gear (too much crit and hit).

I’m hoping the next balance patch fixes some of these issues and is an improvement over this one :D happy holidays

100% agree.. There is a real problem with Smite priest itemization.

Currently out of the 17 pieces of equipment, only 7 Smite Priest BIS are in Naxx. The other 10 BIS pieces are in AQ/ES/BWL, and are overall weaker than the BIS of other classes/specs. This leads to a deterioration in the performance of smite priests in the end game, compared to other classes.

And about the mana issue... Why did you nerf Searing light mana reduction from 100% to 20%? You didn't find any compromise between this two extrem ?

On the one hand you are trying to push the smite priest towards some support functions (resurgent shield improvement, chastise), but on the other you are causing a mana problem such that no smite priest can afford to bubble allies without risking to be oom. (And chastise is too weak, and its use as a buff leads to a loss of dps for the raid currently.)

However, you have done a lot of work and very good work that we can applaud, and we are aware of the workload that CC2 required. ;)
However, these two problems (itemization and mana issue) are still significant, and we hope you can look into it.

[Lightgaard9440]

Kinda disappointed that that frost aoe was nerfed. Why? It wasn't bothering anyone, why make it worse, when many of us enjoyed its gameplay? A little depressing.

[Bahamutxd]

Kinda disappointed that that frost aoe was nerfed. Why? It wasn't bothering anyone, why make it worse, when many of us enjoyed its gameplay? A little depressing.

Blizzard was/is an spell that is particularly weak compared to other AoE due to its high mana cost and its 8 seconds channeling.

The nerf in its slow pretty much killed the spell. It is no longer (it never was) a good damage spell and now it's either a good utility spell.

[Dasitmane]

Kinda disappointed that that frost aoe was nerfed. Why? It wasn't bothering anyone, why make it worse, when many of us enjoyed its gameplay? A little depressing.

Cause they're retarded and have no idea what they're doing

[Manowar76]

btw in general some nerfs are definitely deserved (even if done in not the greatest way). but doing too many (big) nerfs to 1 spec all at once not only feels bad and pisses people off but can really be overkill and hurt specs. And can make it hard to test a good middle ground. Good for playtesting and player feedback to not do it all at once probably.

[Skattberg]

Shadow Priest pvper here - honestly i like the changes to shadow priest. Moving the damage from the dot to Mind Blast and Mind Flay makes the class more active and balanced. I also understand the number nerf to VE, but what i dont understand is the cast time. Shadow Priest in pvp is a close range caster (mind flay, psychic scream, silence and mind blast failing if out of range due to instant damage). VE being instant cast is crucial to the play style, you need it to get close. Now its like, you want to stay away to get VE off, but then youre out of range for Mind Flay. It messes with the whole core of Shadow Priest in pvp. Either make VE instant or make Mind Flay the same range as default spells (30 yrds)
In pve its very awkward. You spend valuable time to get it off, but those 1.5 seconds dont really help the grp that much so you rather just focus on dps.
Imo, the cast time is very unnecessary - the number nerfs, to be fair, are rather fine. but please

[Halfgeek9]

So Starshards went from one meme ability to another? I have to wonder what the point was... Also spells reseting nelf priest autoshot is lame, could have had a cool playstyle where you wait for a bit after casting to shoot and maybe get some mana back but nope... I highly doubt either ability would have been close to the meta in their previous states...

Yeah they gutted Night Elf Priests.

Starshards before at least was usable when leveling, 6s channeled meant you get 1 tic of mana regen, can use it back to back.

Elunes Grace was a nice +dodge % active buff, a mini Rogue Evasion.

Now you get both crap. Bows are not even viable for a Priest due to talent interactions and Wand reliance, and Wands work at point blank range giving mana back, bows suck the dmg is reduced by armor, and Priest isn't gonna get for Range Attack..

Terrible changes.

Give us TBC Starshards please!

[Fugus]

As it stands, I took a break when I learned about the patch and have yet to return due to it.

I played as a feral druid, a hybrid spec, not a cat spec that ignores bear or a bear spec that ignores cat. That philosophy didn't come around till WotLK which killed WoW for me.

They need to address the bloat of the druid tree so that Feral can actually return to what it originally was. I thought the devs were trying to fix and improve things without changing the identities of the class. And a feral druid being a hybrid was a far more core feature of the class than power shifting for energy.

If they wanted to actually address issues with the class, they wouldn't have bloated the specs trying to remove what the spec is known for. They would have allowed them to use their cats speed, PvP set bonus and entangling roots indoors. Those at least would have been improvements. I honestly wasn't a fan of the Tiger's Fury change but at least that didn't change the spec at it's core like this does.

[Inovatu]

As it stands, I took a break when I learned about the patch and have yet to return due to it.

I played as a feral druid, a hybrid spec, not a cat spec that ignores bear or a bear spec that ignores cat. That philosophy didn't come around till WotLK which killed WoW for me.

They need to address the bloat of the druid tree so that Feral can actually return to what it originally was. I thought the devs were trying to fix and improve things without changing the identities of the class. And a feral druid being a hybrid was a far more core feature of the class than power shifting for energy.

If they wanted to actually address issues with the class, they wouldn't have bloated the specs trying to remove what the spec is known for. They would have allowed them to use their cats speed, PvP set bonus and entangling roots indoors. Those at least would have been improvements. I honestly wasn't a fan of the Tiger's Fury change but at least that didn't change the spec at it's core like this does.

Feral plays exactly the same as before

[Fugus]

Feral plays exactly the same as before

So you are saying I can go straight from cat to bear and be viable at it by changing my gear without touching my spec like I used to be able to do on WoW Classic and the TBC servers? Or will I be short a few talent points to do it right now?

[Atreidon]

Feral plays exactly the same as before

So you are saying I can go straight from cat to bear and be viable at it by changing my gear without touching my spec like I used to be able to do on WoW Classic and the TBC servers? Or will I be short a few talent points to do it right now?

If you did it in classic you had to sacrifice quite some talents to do that:
https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent- ... 3222151-05
Notably thick hide & natural shapeshifter / furor or feral instinct.

On Twow you can go with this:
https://talents.turtle-wow.org/druid?po ... AAAAAAAAA=
And be PROFICIENT in both cat and bear.
Only thing you have to choose is thick hide vs blood frenzy (or some of the meme talents). While notably bear can reach armorcap even without thick hide thanks to better feral gear.

[Fugus]

I don't really see your second one as being too good either, you lose thick hide as well as 30% of your claw damage for when you can't hug the targets butt. 10% Armor, your gap closer and 30% claw damage is a decent dent.

But losing the Tiger's Fury won't be too bad for those who powershift.

At this point, honestly would wish they would swap Sylvan Blessing and Furor if they are putting so much of the feral damage 2 and 3 tiers down into balance. Tier 1 balance is just 5 wasted talents it feels like. That would also them to go further down without costing balance or resto specs any.

[Atreidon]

You have 3 points left over in the second spec. You can grab either charge & tiger fury, thick hide orthe claw meme

Ofc you cant have ALL you want. But neither can any tank that also wants dps things. But crucially you have all talents to perform DECENT at both roles.

[Jadowsofel]

This is amazing! Thank you so much TWoW for all your hard and creative work! You breathe life anew into Vanilla-era. /bow

Also, any ETA on when the database will be updated?

[987004590]

It is suggested to swap the natural damage of the talent ELECTRIFY with the ability of shock spell generating stacks of T3.

ELECTRIFY :
FROM : Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells charge you with electricity, increasing your Nature damage dealt by 5% and the critical strike damage bonus of your offensive spells by 50%. Lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 2times.

TO: your Lightning and Shocks spells charge you with electricity, increasing your critical strike damage bonus of your offensive spells by 50%. Lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 2times.


8-Set :
FROM: Your Shocks leave traces of raw elemental power on you, generating 1stack of Electrify and additionally increasing their damage by 10% for each stack of Electrify.

TO: Your Lighting and Shocks leave traces of raw elemental power on you, increasing your Nature damage dealt by 5% and Shocks spell damage by 10% for each stack of Electrify.

I believe that talent should determine the mechanics, while equipment should determine strength. Although I also like how equipment influences gameplay, it seems somewhat foolish that the elemental T3(8-set) only enhances Shock spell, and requiring the Shock gameplay to wear the T3(8-set) feels a bit unreasonable. Therefore, I make the above suggestion.

[Shambakriger]

Feral plays exactly the same as before

So you are saying I can go straight from cat to bear and be viable at it by changing my gear without touching my spec like I used to be able to do on WoW Classic and the TBC servers? Or will I be short a few talent points to do it right now?

Yup, and that’s not a good thing per se
My build ever since cc2 dropped has just been to ignore all of the new talents :/
Luckily none of them feel super necessary, so hybrid bear/cat still feels good I’d say

[Fugus]

Yup, and that’s not a good thing per se
My build ever since cc2 dropped has just been to ignore all of the new talents :/
Luckily none of them feel super necessary, so hybrid bear/cat still feels good I’d say

Glad to hear it, I am still leveling and my druid is my only character so not had a chance to try it at endgame yet. And Feral was the only thing that held my attention in WoW and partly because I was a hybrid.

Honestly more a fan of TBC feral than classic, but despised WotLK feral with a passion, even topping the DPS charts and tanking the raids, it just wasn't fun. Even now, was a bigger fan of Nurturing Instincts than I was of Berserk.

[yumbly]

please undo blizzard nerf, it's terrible and feels like a slap in the face as a frost main

[987004590]

For Night Elf Priest, Maintaining the War III style is a great idea, but I feel the current skills are not effective during my leveling process.

1.Regarding automatic shooting: Due to the priest lacking Aspect of the Cheetah and control skills, they will be approached by monsters after shooting the target 1-2 times, making it impossible to use.

I suggest using "move shooting" instead of "auto shooting."

2.Regarding the Scorching Shot, why not make it fully follow the War III style, where each shot adds damage? If a priest chooses to use shooting as a damage skill, it means they are giving up other casting skills for damage. What is the point of a high mana cost, low damage skill that can only be used once every 10 seconds?

I suggest strictly adhering to the original design of War III skills.

3.Regarding the StarSharps, I've noticed that it has been adjusted, but I can't think of any benefits it offers. The damage is mediocre, the range is small, the casting time is long, it's easily interrupted, and there's nothing appealing about it. Why wouldn't I just use Smite?

I suggest increasing its cooldown to 3-5 minutes to make it a meaningful ultimate ability, Deals multi-target damage.

[Amyloriley]

3.Regarding the StarSharps, I've noticed that it has been adjusted, but I can't think of any benefits it offers. The damage is mediocre, the range is small, the casting time is long, it's easily interrupted, and there's nothing appealing about it. Why wouldn't I just use Smite?

I suggest increasing its cooldown to 3-5 minutes to make it a meaningful ultimate ability, Deals multi-target damage.

Starshards in Vanilla WoW has been positioned as a mana-efficient damage spell. And even with the changes in Turtle, that is still true.

Starshards has a 6 second channel time that uses your mana at the start of the cast. So by the 5 second mark, you start regenerating mana from Spirit as if out of combat. Roughly, with 400 Spirit you gain 100 mana every 5 seconds.

Follow it up by using your Wand, and you continue regenerating mana without having to wait 5 seconds of not casting.

Alternatively, follow it up with Holy Fire, a 3.5 second cast, that's 9.5 seconds of mana regen. Better yet, wait 0.5 seconds between Starshards and Holy Fire to get two ticks of mana-every-five-seconds mana regeneration.

Before in Vanilla, Arcane Priest had a soloing rotation [Power Word: Shield] -> [Holy Fire] -> [Starshards] -> [Holy Fire] -> [Starshards] -> Wand. With the new 30 second cooldown on Starshards, this doesn't work anymore. But the idea of gaining back mana after casting Starshards is still there.

Starshards might not be the most damage dealing spell. Though, with the almost doubling of damage dealt it it could be close. The [Mental Agility] priest talent also affects Starshards in Turtle WoW, which wasn't the case in Vanilla.

Starshards is also a Discipline spell, so it can be used while in Shadowform. Even though Shadowform doesn't buff the effect.

Lastly, the way I used it back in the day, was to play a healer in a dungeon. When I got almost full mana and nobody needed healing, instead of Wanding, I channeled Starshards. It's more damage-dealing, while with the mana cost paid at the start of the cast rather than the end, I could regain some incidental mana after five seconds that might be great when someone suddenly needed healing.

[slak]

I registered on the forum just to ask the developers to cancel the nerf "Improved Blizzard: Slow amount reduced from 30/50/65% to 20/30/40%." This nerf is undeserved and spoils all the impressions of the frost mage, please return everything back!