The full patch notes can be found here.
The Resilience Changes
Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage over time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed.
Well this is easily the biggest PvP change in this expansion thus far. I see what Blizzard is trying to do here. Their idea is that players do not have enough survivability in arena, people get bursted too easily. Unfortunately, I feel their solution is mediocre at best, and will be greatly detrimental to rogues in their current state. Here’s why.
The problem with WOTLK isn’t just damage, its also healing burst. One insanely fast heal (that you have to guess to interrupt) already heals way too hard. On good healers, you have to guess if the healer is faking or not at this stage of wow to try to get an interrupt on the vast majority of heals, and penance is a complete guess because even if they fake it they can use two huge ticks for a full health bar. One heal should not bring a target to full every single time it goes off, especially when they have become so easy to get off. Nerfing damage without nerfing this will have a huge effect on the game’s structure and balance.
This resilience change is great in that it solves the problem of damage in PvP. Yes, it was too high, and this will probably put damage on a full resil target right about where it should be. But why not instead adjust stamina levels by 10-15 percent rather than resilience? Buffing resilience buffs healers and classes that can last an extremely long time (warriors, warlocks) and don’t rely on a quick slurry of burst and cooldowns. This change is going to see healing dominate this game , there will be no more double dps success (and I know this is already a non-factor but triple dps will be completely gone as well). Strong healing and survivability goes best with classes that last like warriors and support dps that never goes oom like warlocks or dks. Rogues are the MS class that will struggle the most with these changes because at the moment we have the least longevity as fights go longer when compared against the other ms classes.
We considered the idea that resilience acts like a debuff for heals, but we’re not happy with what that might do to the game. You’d be in a situaiton where sometimes you might not want extra resilience since it lowers your healing. Resilience is already something of a trade-off since it often comes at the expense of other stats (though hopfully less after these changes).
There is a possibility that if fights go on for too long that dps casters may run OOM more than they should. That is something we may have to adjust, but we don’t think it’s simple to math out what kind of buff casters should be given at the moment. Note that the intent is not to turn every Arena match into a 20 minute slog. The intent is to have fewer 30 second matches.
I do see some people saying that healers were already in god mode and this will only buff them. Just realize that player perceptions or intentions are different. For one person, a healer in a 2 vs. 2 shouldn’t be able to keep their partner up alone. For another, having a 1 healer, 4 dps team in a 5 should be perfectly viable.
So what I take from that response is that they are aware that healers are already incredibly strong and are only going to get stronger. I don’t know how to respond to this specifically but it is bad news for rogues as they stand at the moment. Adjusting stamina would have been a much, MUCH more balanced and obvious statistic to buff to balance the game rather than resilience. At least we can say blizz is aware of the problems and has the right goal in mind, but where are these 30 second games they’re talking about? In 3s, yes things are slightly too bursty but games aren’t that fast. I really hope that their vision for arena is some kind of balance where people will die without ooming the opposition.
Shadowdance Change
Shadow Dance: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Now lasts 6 seconds, down from 10 seconds.
This change follows the sentiment of trying to make the games longer. Shadowdance, as it stands, is only good for its (more…)
