by Magistrate - 10 years ago     show comments

The latest Warlords of Draenor beta notes were released today, highlighting Hunter and Death Knight changes as well as some other small updates. You can read the full list of beta notes on the official blog.

Reading Notes

• Note updates and additions are denoted in bolded text
• Removed sections are denoted with strike-through text.
• Only updates since the last note list have been included for ease of reading. See the official blog post for more.
• Some larger sections, sentences, and subtitles have been retained for context reading.
• Click to navigate via the Changes Index

Changes Index

• Game System Changes
  • Racial Traits
• Quality of Life
  • Self-Sustainability
• Classes
  • Death Knight
  • Hunter
  • Mage

Game System Changes

Racial Traits

We decided to bring down the couple high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring everyone else up to that. We achieved that by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and occasionally adding new ones where needed. Our goal with these changes is to reach parity amongst races.

Human

• Mace Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with maces).
• Sword Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with swords).
• The Human Spirit has been redesigned. It now increases Versatility, scaling with character level. no longer increases Spirit by 3%, and instead now increases 2 secondary stats by an amount scaling with character level. You can choose which 2 secondary stats it increases. This has not yet been implemented.

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Quality of Life

Self-Sustainability

Another area of gameplay that we polished is how characters are able to sustain their own health, primarily when frequently killing enemies, such as in solo questing.

Hunter

• Kill Shot now heals the Hunter for 15% of maximum health if it kills the target.
• Survivalist is a new passive ability learned by Survival Hunters at level 10.
  • Survivalist increases the Hunter’s chance to Multistrike by 10%. Additionally, the Hunter gains 15% health over 10 seconds after killing a target.

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Classes

Death Knight

Blood Changes

Active Mitigation was a very successful design that was inspired by Death Knights’ tanking style. However, it went beyond that, and Death Knights themselves were somewhat left behind in that regard. We made several changes to bring up the interactivity of Blood combat. This includes making Death Strike cause healing based on attack power, but be affected by the new Resolve passive (see Tank Vengeance and Resolve above), which gives it the traditional increase from recent damage. Plus, Rune Tap is being significantly improved, to become a strong Active Mitigation button. To tie those together, Blood’s Mastery is being changed to affect both the size of the Blood Shield absorb, and the new Rune Shield absorb.

Additionally, we removed Dodge and Parry from gear, and expect Blood Death Knights to value Haste and Crit as important secondary stats. In order to achieve that, we made Riposte give defensive value to Critical Strikes, and Scent of Blood give defensive value to Multistrike. To solve GCD-capping issues and increase the value of Haste, we also removed the passive rune regeneration increase from Improved Blood Presence. Finally, we tweaked the targeting AI of Dancing Rune Weapon, and fixed it up to properly copy most Talents that you know.

• Rune Tap has been redesigned. It now reduces all damage taken by 50% for 3 seconds. now grants an absorption shield equal to 30% of your missing health. It also now has 2 charges, with a 40-second recharge time.
  • Will of the Necropolis has been redesigned. It now automatically triggers an immediate, free Rune Tap when you take damage that reduces you below 30% health. This effect cannot occur more often than once every 45 seconds. now grants an immediate charge, and makes your next Rune Tap free. However, its damage reduction buff now only lasts 4 seconds (down from 8 seconds).

Miscellaneous

There were also a few other miscellaneous changes. The Runic Power generation of Anti-Magic Shell was standardized, to make it more understandable and balanced. Level-60 and Level-75 talent rows have swapped places, so the important rune regeneration talents could be acquired earlier. Conversion was changed to cost different amounts by specialization, instead of reducing Runic Power generation differently by specialization. This way, Runic Power beyond what you spend on Conversion is not penalized.

• Conversion no longer has an initial tick, and now costs 15 Runic Power/second for Blood, 20 Runic Power/sec for Frost, and 10 Runic Power/second for Unholy.

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Hunter

Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Chimera Shot no longer heals the Hunter.

Marksmanship Changes

One of our new secondary stats Multistrike, is strikingly similar to the Wild Quiver Mastery for Marksmanship Hunters. To address this similarity, we replaced Wild Quiver with a new Mastery: Sniper Training. Marksmanship Hunters that favored Mastery before will want to favor Multistrike for a similar feel. For their new Mastery, we wanted to add some depth to their moment-to-moment gameplay, and compliment Critical Strike. In order to do that, we brought back the concept of Sniper Training.

We also changed the design of Chimera Shot (and fixed its name), in order to better capture the intended flavor. Finally, we added an interaction between Careful Aim and Rapid Fire (and indirectly Aimed Shot through a Draenor Perk), so as to add a bit more depth to their gameplay.

• Mastery: Wild Quiver has been removed.
• Sniper Training is a new Mastery for Marksmanship Hunters, replacing Wild Quiver.
• Sniper Training activates when the Hunter stands still for 3 seconds, giving them the Sniper Training effect for 6 seconds, increasing damage, shot range, and critical strike damage by 4% (increased by Mastery).
• Chimera Shot has been renamed Chimaera Shot. It is now a two-headed shot that hits two targets, and deals Frost or Nature damage. It no longer heals the Hunter.
• Careful Aim now also provides its effect against all targets when Rapid Fire is active, and increases critical strike chance by 60% (down from 75%).

Survival Changes

Apart from rotational changes through Ability Pruning, changes for Survival Hunters mostly center on Lock and Load. We changed how Lock and Load is triggered to increase the value of Multistrike, provide gameplay depth and the ability to pool damage more. Also note the new passive ability, Survivalist, which increases multistrike chance by 10%, in order to give Survival Hunters some baseline Multistrike chance.

• Black Arrow now deals 60% more damage, inflicts Shadow damage every 3 seconds (up from every 2 seconds), has a duration of 18 seconds (down from 20 seconds), and triggers Lock and Load on Multistrike hits.
• Explosive Shot now costs 15 Focus (down from 25 Focus).
• Lock and Load’s effects have been incorporated into Black Arrow and have been redesigned.
  • Lock and Load now causes the next Explosive Shot to not trigger its cooldown, but no longer causes it to be free or reset the ability’s current cooldown. This effect can stack up to 5 times.
• Survivalist is a new passive ability learned by Survival Hunters at level 10.
  • Survivalist increases the chance to Multistrike by 10% and the Hunter gains 15% health over 10 seconds after killing a target.

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Mage

Ability Consolidation and Refinement

• Ignite now deals the same total damage with a 1 second period (down from 2 seconds). Base duration changed to 5 seconds so that duration when refreshed remains 6 seconds.

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(Source)