Can’t believe I actually spend my free time to write a post this long but reading the 8.3 class changes I feel like blizzard is completely out of their mind.
First of all separating pvp from pve changes at this point is a must. As for 8.3 it will be another number tweeking patch which comes with the minimum amount of effort to actually improve quality of life things or general pvp/pve gameplay.
Going through the patch notes step by step I can only comment the effects in PvP. I do play PvE but this post is aimed at the PvP community.
Another point is I’m obviously not playing each of the classes that actually receive a tweeking so people that have more knowledge about a certain tweek and their class feel free to write your opinion below so it sums up. As my char reveals I main disc so expect an opinion about the state of disc priests (Feel free to do same for your class below).
Please refer to the link posted and the patch notes written down there. I’m too lazy to copy all here.
Druid
(Balance)
Already maybe the worst dps in arena at the moment. Nerfing their damage even more is unneccessary and probably only aimed at PvE, yet it will make them even more useless in PvP.
Mage
Alright, I dont mind those changes.
Monk
(WW)
25% buff on RSK is completely overpowered. Keep in mind that they already have ms (heal reduction). Those patchnotes will probably make us face double ww in 3s. It’s too much, by far.
10% Blackout Kick buff. I can live with that. At least it won’t do 70k crits.
Priest
(Disc)
Atonement healing reduced from 55% to 50%.
Disc is already the worst dampening healer. Nerfing atonement especially in PvP (again) makes no sense to me.
(Shadow)
Absolutely overkill this nerf. The problem with them in 3v3 is the low cd on fade which makes it feel like they are unkillable. I dont think anyone minds their damage if they are able to kill them.
Warlock
(Affliction)
The whole community hates destro locks and the warlock players want more speccs viable to play. The fact that people pay monthly money to get this useless change is absurd. Rework it, do something.
I know those patch notes are not final yet but most of the time when Blizzard writes something down, they actually make it live even tho they say it is not final. So imo action must be taken. We all want PvP changes, actual balance changes. Those number tweeking patches are frustrating. Below you can now find my opinion about disc priests right now and what I think they should change about it. I won’t go deep into the topic but give some changes that could be implemented fast (My goal is not to make the class op/good, but to make it fun). Feel free to write changes below for your class that you think should be implemented.
Reduce schism dmg increase from 40% to 30%. This is mainly to help them balance in 2s with rogues when having schism/dark and 1/2 flame stacks up. The damage can be silly.
Fade brakes all slow effects when activated. Give us some mobility/slow breaker finally. It’s about time.
Focused will reduces the damage taken by 20%, was 15%. Facing melees isn’t fun. This won’t make them too tanky but make melee teams at least consider another target when facing a disc. Atm its a 90% chance that they just tunnel you and you are on 1 place pressing shadowmends (great gameplay).
Atonement lasts 5 seconds longer on each player if it was activated by shield. The fact that you have to press your shield all the time just to keep atonement up on everyone is tiring and boring. Maybe rework it, idk.
Those are just small changes, but it will for sure make disc more enjoyable to play. My aim is not to buff it but to improve the general gameplay.
I agree. While the changes do make sense for PvE, they will have the complete opposite effect in PvP.
I’m actually happy Frost is getting a buff though, even if it is only ice lance.
let’s get into detail why these buffs aren’t as big and op as you praise.
let’s say a current RSK is doing 25000 non crit maybe even less around 23-25k if i remember right at 440 ilvl
a 25% buff will buff it’s damage to 31025 adding 6% from hitcombo it will be a 34000 normal hit.
so let’s add the critical value of 150% to it and we get to a 53000 Crit in PvP
Well now let’s add SEF as a flat 35% Increase if ALL clones Crit or hit
So if ALL clones crit we get to a 69k Rising Sun Kick.
Doesn’t sound so impressive to me considering 400k health pools it’s more of a freedom damage buff finally getting some damage going on in this meta
let’s say we’re at 34000 again and popping SEF a normal hit will do 45900 and all this considering popping a burst cooldown and adding hitcombo percentage on it.
It’s not as big as people make it out to be especially on 500k healthpools during 8.3 which will add like 5k on the damage i just listed above because of ww’s scaling.
RSK does need a BIG buff. After a game I checked my average RSK and it was 8700 damage after a long game vs a warlock comp. It’s laughable. Every once in a while it did 20k but the average was 8700.
The problem with ww was never their damage. And you doing 8700 rsk’s can only mean you have the worst gear. I’ve seen ww’s do 20k dps constant in arena (single target). Buffing their dmg is definitely not the way to go to make them more attractive in PvP. Unless you want some gumbo press 1 2 3 gameplay where you just win with dmg and don’t have to press anything else.
Probably a duh comment, but I don’t think any of the class changes are made with PvP in mind. The developers’ notes cover it all really - the focus is on tuning dps and tweaking the damage of individual abilities relative to each other.
I think the PvP balance is sort of treated seperately, and has been so for a long time. There have basically been hundreds of PvP-specific changes that have already shaped the PvP balance environment to be very different from the PvE environment. So any class design oriented toward PvP will probably also be PvP-specific.
We’ll see what the PTR brings over the coming weeks. Personally I’d always advocate that Blizzard should be aggressive and push PvP balance changes frequently, but it seems the developers have opted for the opposite approach throughout most of BfA (so far). Gives a more naturally-developed meta-game, but I’m not sure if that’s what people want.
one of the few times I actually have to agree with Jito.
you have to be pretty deluded to think blizzard have made any of these changes with PvP in mind, as it’s always pretty clearly indicated in a sub-section of the dev post when a change is specifically made for PvP.
Yes it’s pretty clear that those changes are aimed towards PvE. Yet they didn’t mention that those won’t apply in PvP as well which will lead to even less balanced PvP.
20k constantly ST? Well, if they have 100% uptime on cloth or leather without a single interrupt on their fof etc., then maybe - but lets be honest here: if you don’t even find your fear on fof with sef running and your mate is just watching the monk with open mouth instead of helping you, you deserve to face 20k dps.
Just checked the buffs with RSim - even on a boss like patchwork (10 mins) RSK+BOK together are less than <3% dps increasement. So you will see scary 20.6k in the future (if you still don’t find your buttons to stop fof…).
Sorry, but you don’t have to transform a PvE mosquito into a PvP elephant - it’s still just a mosquito.
Sure. The way it tends to go is that the PTR focuses on PvE changes, because the raid testing gives Blizzard some initial data that they can use to tweak the balance (in addition to the data they have from live servers).
And then they follow it up with a round of hotfix tuning after the patch is live, prior to Mythic raiding being unlocked.
The PvP changes are always added afterward. Because Arena testing on the PTR isn’t very popular, then the data they get is limited, so they tend to wait until the patch is live and a week or two has passed and lots of Arena data has been generated, and then they push a round of PvP-specific balance changes through hotfixes.
That’s how it’s usually been at least. We’ll see if it’s similar or different this time around, but I’d be surprised if we see a lot of PvP class change iteration on the PTR. Again, PvP testing just isn’t very popular. People will talk about it on the forums, yes, but actual PTR testing is something few will bother with. Mostly people wait until the patch is live, then they queue for Arena and test everything, and then proceed to go to the forums and provide their feedback/criticism.
It is really sad that they are obliterating underperforming specs and buffing good specs. The meta will be even more centralised around destros caster cleave and ww/dhs… in 8.3. Destros scales so well with their mainstats and their flashpoints traits… i dont wanna play this meta next season, it’s so bad already.
True. In big patches like x.1 x.2 x.3 etc they should do way more class changes and tuning to shake things a bit…pvp is dying, its frustrating as hell and yet they do only couple of tweeks here and there for few classes and thats it…everything stays the same. …dissapointing.
This is because when you use ESF you only hit for 45% of your normal damage but so do the two clones resulting in low damage per kick, but tripling the amount of kicks.
Would be cool to take the class spells into account when you post something like that. Imagine averaging 20k when ESF is up, 60k gcds yeah ofc.
Why don’t you post on your ww main? It’s fine for me if people want to defend their class but in the end everyone here knows they don’t need a damage buff in PvP. And I dont really need teaching from someone with 2.5 max xp as ww. Other than that you don’t even have a geared ww atm so your opinion about all this is kinda irrelevant and you just throw random numbers in the room without actual evidence. Next.
It’s still only 26k with a 35% burst running (usually also combined with trinkets, racials (orc for example)) etc. Not to mention that each hit can still get parried/dodged/block and each one has to stand in range (frostnova etc.).
Buffing this by 25% won’t make double ww a solid or even dominating comp.
Well, afai can see ww monk is currently 15-20% behind top dds in PvE (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/23#metric=dps&dataset=95&class=DPS). The changes are so small, that they will still be 12-17% behind. And since we are in BfA were PvE dps is usually comparable with PvP dps, I don’t think we need to fear ww monks.
I’m always posting with this char. I also not main anything - I’m not even playing the game serious. Logging just once a week to do a m+10 and pvp cap, in hope the game will get better…
How often do I have to mention that this post is only aimed towards the PvP community? It’s obvious that this tweeking is for PvE, doesnt change the fact it will impact PvP as well. If you don’t play the game anyway…what? Im speechless. Play the game then come back and tell us your opinion. Thanks.
How often do I have to mention, that dps score in PvE gives a good overview of dps in PvP? There aren’t templates anymore, neither we see any big spellchanges between PvP and PvE. So high Dps in PvE usually means high dps in PvP - same for bad dps.
Sure, in PvP a lot more matters if a class/spec is good or not, but you were basically just talking about dps…
