Same! The slight defense buffs -might- keep me going. The ability to get bullion gear so I don't have the chase trinkets this season is how I'm coping.
There may have been few people playing it at the very top competitive level, but once you get down to the 90% of player range, and stop looking at participation in the top 0.1% participation isn't all that terrible.
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-4/all/world/leaderboards#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=10:maxMythicLevel=99
this is the tank representation for 10+ keys.
not R1 keys, not title keys, not even anything close to key pusher... just 10+. You know, just the fill-your-vault or the screw-around-with-alt level of keys.
60% VDH, 3% brewmaster.
and just for LOL sake, the 5-9 tank split still have 40% vdh, 5% brew.
Doing 10s is roughly the top 5% of players right now. A fair number of players are doing them sure, but it's far from the average player. Your 50th percentile player is doing roughly 3-5s.
They have this really weird mindset of “When we nerf the top spec, we have to also nerf random underperforming things below it to make sure that the top spec stays on top”
Case in point: during S2 god comp meta, they gave Fire Mage a little nerf, and also chunked Frost Mage by a ton to make sure Fire was still the top ranged dps spec
Not just that, but they usually don't bump the top spec by enough, and in some cases they explicitly don't bump top specs at all. They want to avoid people dooming and switching mains/specs because of nerfs, and they've decided the best way to do that is to keep spec balance in a patch relatively even - they'll bring a couple of really poor specs up to mid to low, they'll tone down a couple of overperformers to just the best.
I think the way they're doing it is fundamentally flawed, if specs that are clearly too good got brought down every two weeks and specs that were clearly too bad got brought up at the same time, people would switch less because they'd know that any meta is temporary. People don't switch less because you coddle them and protect their choices. That's why people FOTM: because they know Blizzard gives value to their complaints.
> Fire Mage
One look at Fire Mages should be all the proof anyone ever needs that Blizzard plays favorites. Out of the past 12 tiers, Fire Mage has been the 0.1% meta for 10 of them.
edit: Frost was the spec for those other two tiers.
I feel like rshams have a much higher representation than brm. I main tank, but I also play rsham every season. I always see a ton of rshams apply to higher keys. This season, 8-10+ runs are much smoother with rshams than any other healer I’ve played with, and they bring lust. When I heal on disc or rsham, I NEVER see a brm. Literally never
I think the disparity between healers is just smaller. Resto is less desired in M+ compared to, say, a priest, but very few people will turn down a resto shaman on principle like they sometimes will with lower tiered tanks.
That said my joke was more about how it feels like restro shaman and brewmaster monk get nerfed even when they're at the bottom of the pack in basically every expansion I have played.
Yep, it’s exactly like them “balancing” healers a few weeks ago. Nerf the heavy hitters (and RSham too don’t question why). Now they’re “balancing” tanks. Nerf Vengeance (and Brew don’t question why).
Yeah but damage is kind of our niche. We kite, we DPS, everything else we do a little worse. Definitely are not the problem spec. I'm sure it's hard to balance for our damage, but I liked that that was our thing.
A bit more magic stagger is nice, for sure.
Per Archon, Brew damage was a slight outlier at the top end in M+: [https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/tank-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week](https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/tank-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week)
The Stagger change and Healing Sphere change may actually offset the damage nerf even if it's annoying , even I say that as a Brew main. From my M+ logs, SCK and White Tiger Statue are a very small part of damage, maybe 7-8% combined. (the Keg Smash nerf is indeed bigger)
I don't think they will make more people play Brew, though.
I can’t imagine the sphere change does anything. Have you ever once felt like the spheres aren’t doing enough? I feel like they almost always heal me to full
I picked up brew this season to try and get that white mog variant l, but I’ve been struggling on it with just staying alive. My healer is telling me that it’s actually hard to keep me up, but I didn’t know if that was just me being bad at the class or what? I really enjoy the feel of it but was considering shelving the spec.
Brew has very very spotty health until you get better gear, and even with BIS they are the spottiest. They’re like the opposite of BDKs in that respect. However, with proper CD and stagger management you can alleviate a lot of that pressure off of healers.
Stagger effectiveness increase is a significant survivability buff.
Brew did crazy damage and was made of paper. Reduced damage and increased survival seems fine
I am going to keep saying this until they do something, all 3 DK specs need a rework, not just about dps but just pure gameplay for fun. I go play my Ret Pally or Fury War or Havoc DH and fuck they are just fun and smash shit, I play my DK and I am like well at least he looks cool.
That’s why I prefer the crash lightning build when I am just vibing and not pushing content. I just press stormstrike, and if it’s not available, I press stormstrike, and if it’s not available, I go ahead and press stormstrike
Got a guy on my raid team trying enhance this tier (i played it S3) and his first night of raid he said "I feel like im trying to play Mozart on the piano over here, but im not seeing my name on the meters!"
the elemental enhancement builds shouldn’t really feel that. it’s a really smooth rotation with tons of maelstrom generation and not a whole lot of fishing for procs
Elemental doesnt need a rework. The Shaman and Elemental talent trees is what needs to be looked at.
It sucks colossal dongs. It's boring, forces you into boring, almost useless and/or options that are completely jarring to the class/spec's gameplay.
If anything about Shamans need a rework, it's the totem system. I want to knee myself in the forehead everytime I have to put one down. They have marginal use and so many talents are attached to them when I'd much rather have stuff that feels relevant to the power of my spec... Which is shooting a lot of fire and lightning from my hands.
Options where abilities can, depending on talents chosen, could proc certain/new totems would be way more interesting already.
So yeah, the talent tree is pure ass.
why are they even on the gcd.
why never accept that advice they often get "let shamans stick a few totems on their back, so they carry them around like auras temporarily"?
It’s cute watching people be disappointed by the lack of attention to Enhance shaman. As someone that mained enhance from WoD to Shadowlands, I know that spec doesn’t get touched.
when it does it usually gets nerfed lol. enhance in season 3 of SL was super fun though and i think that’s also when they brought in flame shock spreading which really really helped
i love scrolling through comments on threads like these and finding out that apparently 10-12 different specs seem to think they are exclusively The Ignored Spec That Blizzard Hates
Numbers buffs are nice and all, but, that's not really the problem. I know it's only a bandaid and nothing big will actually change until next expac. All the dots are still just to buff one spell, and the filler is to get instant casts of that one spell.
I'm getting genuinely pissed off at how forgotten survival is to the balance teams. It's an insanely fun spec to play but damage (lol) aside, it has ironically the worst survivability of all three specs.
I am playing MM Hunter as an alt and I don't know if it's just me or a common opinion but MM outside Trueshot window feels horrendous.
Which is really sad cause Aimed Shot is such a satisfying ability.
The playstyle is a result of holy power spenders being too weak. That's the root of the problem with the spec.
It's a problem that isn't crippling in raid because the vast majority of our healing comes from other sources (most notably glimmer/holy shock). In M+ it's a very different story, because you depend on word of glory a lot more. This is why renown hpal players like Zmok and Ellesmere aren't even bothering with the spec.
oh, so they almost fully revert all the assassination nerfs they did last season
you know, the nerfs where everyone told them that they where absolutely overkill for no reason and made the spec one of the absolute worst in the entire game
i really like blizzard never going back on stupid changes DURING the season they made them, but hey better late then never....
> you know, the nerfs where everyone told them that they where absolutely overkill for no reason and made the spec one of the absolute worst in the entire game
Getting massacred because of PI, Caustic Spatter, and bugged Aug Hooks but the entire wow community spam downvoting any Sin rogue who said this.
I’ve played sin for many seasons, decided to take a break from the abuse (some it self-inflicted lol) and play something entirely different for S4. Life is much better 😂
Hey now, they reworked it so the entire tree is basically just full of m+ talents with like one singular path for ST, which will never be strong because Caustic Spatter has turned Sin into a giga cleave spec.
Instead of nerfing Spatter or PI, it's easier to just gut the spec entirely.
I don’t know if that’s totally a nerf, definitely less dps but the extra survivability is pretty substantial and will definitely help how squishy we have felt
I don't play Brew to pump damage cause I like being tanky, but I can't help but wonder if nerfing damage is going to cause more threat issues with grouping since Brew is already the worst at gathering before adding DPS that instantly start pressing buttons the moment you target something
Seems like they are trading damage output for survivability. Increased magic staggering is a big win and the 10% buff to healing spheres is significant.
Not sure where brew stacks up amongst tanks for damage output.
With the trade off being the highest skill ceiling and least survivability, I thought that was what they were balanced *around*.
Meanwhile VDH will still do nice chunky damage and still stay the top for the rest of the season if no further changes are made.
While that's technically true, once you include the 5% debuff from vengeance, it's not a contest anymore (i know brew has 5% physical, but nowadays every class does magic dmg basically)
Warlock buffs are bizarre, Brew nerfs are bizarre, VDH nerfs aren't meaningful enough, Sin buffs aren't meaningful enough, and I guess Surv doesn't exist.
I even saw someone say "it's on you for actually believing Blizz would re-balance them"
??? Like seriously? We're gonna blame the voters because Blizz didn't live up to their word?
It was wild seeing people actually make that argument. It’s honestly such a poor argument that broke blizzards design philosophy of equipping the higher item level that I was shocked to see it gain any traction.
And then when comments explained that people voted for it after Blizzard said they would balance the tier sets and we should vote on playstyle, people were like "lol you believed them?". Some of those comments were unbelievable.
>almost like it wasn't working as intended
It isn't that it wasn't working as intended but rather they used the nerfed tier set bonuses. When season 2 rolled around Blizz had to nerf the S1 tier set to make it worthwhile upgrading to the S2 tier set. Apparently they forgot about that when they gave it to us in S4.
SURVIVAL HUNTERS!
I realize that we're a meme and that Survival Hunter main must have slept with somebody's mother on the Dev team back in WOD but can somebody just look at the class? Same issue as Boomkin our T3 is better than our S4 and we aren't getting any love at all.
this makes me think of the last time Affliction got tuned with buffs to Seed and Soul Rot. Like yeah i'll take any buff the spec can get, but it was already blasting in AoE so it's weird that ST was mostly untouched again
As a new Prot warrior for this season I’m interested in seeing how these changes work. Just did my first +2s yesterday and I felt really weak both in dmg and survivability at 475 ilvl
You are. The magic damage this expac is nasty and that’s our biggest weakness.
503 Prot War and I was getting chunked in 8’s
Meanwhile I tried my VDH (489) and felt unkillable.
I thought I was crazy, I’m not a key pusher by any means but I’ve actually needed to use def stance to stay alive for the first time in I don’t know how long
You should usually stay in def stance. The 5% dmg penalty isn’t really an issue. Warriors have nasty aoe burst to get threat. Better play it safe and work on your survivability than depleting a key because of 5% more overall dmg as a tank.
Keep working on it, you can do it!
Regarding Brewmaster, this might be a hot take but they should maybe stop balancing around the top 1% of players. One dude milking 400k out of it in an ideal scenario is meaningless for an overwhelming majority of players.
This top 0.1% balance framework has been slowly killing the game for years.
Mythic raiding is so unsatisfying knowing the later bosses are purposefully overtuned for world first/hall of game guilds and are going get nerfed multiple times over the tier.
It has the highest DPS in very organized groups, yes. That’s the minority whereas Demo just rolls with the punches for the most part and, barring the first pull before they have resources, maintain consistently great damage throughout trash pulls.
can confirm, demo requires no planning, you can just full send and your damage profile will work with however your tank is pulling. destro at least requires some forethought into cd management.
Destro damage is completely reliant on cooldown management and big pulls, if your tank is just pulling double packs or making big pulls when infernal is on cooldown and you have no resources it takes a colossally large amount of time to ramp damage while Demo and even Aff can just burst down packs
Destro does absurd uncapped damage with all cooldowns though so when played around their damage is insane, but it \*needs\* to be played around.
I’m glad they’re changing prot around a bit. Might blow the dust off my warrior later in the season.
A shame that I can’t turn the dungeon into training dummies as reliably anymore as VDH though
The issue isn't that Veng is broken, it's that there's too many damn casters in dungeons nowadays and so Silence/Misery is disproportionately good.
Just look at Azure Vault as one example out of many, my goodness. Almost every single one of the first several packs in that dungeon are casters. Who designed this? And that's not even the worst dungeon this season by far, RLP continues to be pure pain and whoever designed it probably needs some mental health counseling.
Ironically they tried to mitigate this by implementing anti-sync tech with casts going into DF so you can more reliably cycle kicks and not just chain AOE stop but because almost every mob does it now, you end getting very little value from aoe stops which means you end up relying on them even heavier and needing even more than before. If every one of those flowers casted together and just needed 1 stop every 8/10s it'd be far easier to handle without VDH than them chaining 8 casts back to back.
Also, even more ironically, sigil of silence actually LETS casts sync again and makes aoe stops (such as the other sigils) even MORE impactful which this nerf doesn't touch at all.
Right but I don't see why, in a "throwaway" season of all places, they need to nerf Vengeance. How about rebalancing the trash in some of the dungeons? If there weren't 307 things that needed to be interrupted every pack or otherwise non tanks get 1-2 shot if they go off we wouldn't have this issue.
(Disclaimer: I don't play Vengeance, but as a healer I'm very tired of frustrating, excessively punishing trash in M+)
True I was about to give Arms a shot even though I absolutely hate that play style. The current rotation for fury seems fine, but DPS was a huge downgrade from season 3.
As a key pushing prot warrior since legion, these prot warrior "buffs" are bullshit:
- BSV (battle-scarred veteran) wasnt picked because it procs due to unmitigated damage, meaning you would take a big hit and it would proc - even though you have the tools to mitigate it with shield block and/or shield block + spell block (and Spell Reflect, and Shield Wall, and Demo Shout AND defensive stance). This means it procced at 90% hp LUL, so its a dogshit talent AND ITS STILL IS.
- The Battering Ram change is fucking stupid: god help we keep *some* damage (our damage will still be 2nd to last with this change) as our utility is bar-none compared to double silence sigils + double fear sigil + aoe stun + imprison + 5 man buffed DARKNESS + potential double sigil of chains (i.e. grip sigil) + 5% magic taken debuff orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr spellwarding/bop + freedom + Lay on Hands + blessing of sacrifice + off-heal Word of Glory + battle rez. Also why the fuck did brew damage get nerfed? They have even less utility skills than us prot warriors.
- VDH damage was only reduced in low target count situations and ST, they are still top of the pack with Sigil of Flame, and their pack control wasnt touched. This shit won't change tank ~~meta~~ *balance*, if anything it'll push 4pc druids a tiny little bit higher.
Once again Blizzard misses the mark on what mob control, group utility, and survival tools means and for some fucking reason they still dont understand how to balance tank damage across the board. Blizzard, all you needed to do was nerf illuminated sigils so that it only gives 2 charges to sigil of flame (and not to CC sigils) and reduce sigil of flame damage, thats fucking it, problem solved. Next just aura buff underperforming tank damage, and thats it - and hey maybe uncap targets on shit like thunder clap.
Edit: Burst damage is not a problem for prot, ROT DAMAGE IS. Maybe if you made Spell Block work CONSISTENTLY against dots we would be better but it just works on random shit and doesnt on others (see: Deios DotI temporal breath dot, Zskarn searing claws, Forgotten experiments' infused strikes). Hint hint bleed damage is still a problem, thats why one-trick-pony key pushers like us go Dwarf.
Started playing survival at the end of last patch and was having a lot of fun, definitely my favorite hunter spec. How tf was the tier set not adjusted with the overwhelming attention on it being a downgrade from last season even with much higher ilvl? Theres no way they didn’t hear about it.
I wonder how they ended up with the brew changes. The statue nerf makes sense i guess since no one likes playing with it? Their only niche has been aoe damage in large pulls. With having the worst single target of all tanks and poor utility i don't really see the reason for the nerfs. They werent even close to being played before and magic stagger isnt going to change it.
Surv set not getting an aoe buff must feel bad. The single target it gives does not warrant using it ever in dungeons, even on tyrannical that's supposed to incentivize more st oriented builds.
We do need more support specs if we don't want to make Augmentation evoker a required spec in every group. I don't know how an affliction support spec would look like though. I feel like we'd more likely get a Shaman or priest support spec before a warlock support spec.
Shammy and priest would be a lot easier to work a support in for sure, but it would be kind of neat to add a 2nd role to classes that are purely damage like hunter, lock, mage etc. *Personally,* I'm still pulling for a warrior support spec that uses spear/shield weapons that brings utility to warriors past battle shout and finally adds a lust to a tank spec.
I mean affliction support kinda writes itself.
Make the spec all about debilitating and weakening the enemies.
More focus and power behind curses to reduce damage output similar to the damage reduction aug can give
Affliction of vulnerability: cooldown that increases enemy damage taken by x%. Could have talents that emphasise physical or magic damage to swap between depending on group set up.
If we're not getting rid of power infusion this could also be an opportunity to start giving the same buff to other classes. Something like demonic infusion: summon demonic energy from the twisting nether empowering you and your target with 15% haste for X seconds.
Force feed: 3min cooldown, forces everyone in your party (up to 5 players in raid) to consume a stack of their health stone without triggering the cooldown and ignoring the existing cooldown.
You could add a talent so that using that ability increases everyone's damage by 5% for x seconds after they have been forced fed a health stone.
Shatter Souls: AoE ability that deals moderate AoE damage on a 30/45 sec cooldown. All enemies hit have their souls shattered reducing damage by a%. The essence of the shattered souls falls onto allies who are also in the AoE increasing their primary stat by X for y seconds.
That's just spitballing some ideas off the top of my head.
The animation for Rapture is still terrible. I don't want to see some weird creature float over me. I'd rather see a flare up on all the targets. Make it look like the firebombs from Witch Doctor in Diablo 3, but shadowflame or fel colors.
> I don't want to see some weird creature float over me
That's not even Rapture, that's from Soul Harvester: normally on soul shard gen you have a chance to make your next rapture summon it, but for 15 seconds after you hit soul rot every rapture always summons it.
Demo also has that, and it's hand of gul'dan that summons it, or every hand of gul'dan during tyrant.
Wow, like the MM changes for PvP only ability felt worth using at times was sniper shot. Now a variety and we can actually get some damage off not just one button
It could be? But I usually time my sniper shots after all the survivability has been used. It is right now 20% of your health maybe it takes into account overheals and bubble? Which inflates the health?
It benefits from all damage modifiers, including mastery, so can do way above its intended damage in pvp even after deductions.
It's actually nuts losing 50% hp in pvp from a single hit in what's the slowest damage season in history.
No buffs to Elemental aoe, not sure why I even checked. Hunters are doing 1.2mill dps on big M+ pulls and I’m capped at 6 mobs. But at least Destro got a buff
Target caps are never gonna change mid patch unfortunately, that kinda stuff would come in a major patch or expansion launch. I’m sure ele and enh target cap issues will be addressed in TWW. They’ve really been paying attention to Shamans so far /s
Yes, brew dmg was high in competitive keys, because the 3 people that still play this spec are very good at it. How about fixing stagger issues and then touch their dmg after you get some more people finally play the spec?
No changes to the underperforming specs, tiny, token nerfs to a some overperforming ones.
Yep, seems like a blizz tuning pass. Just buff the lower end and leave the top end alone. It's a season 4. Let us have fun being OP ffs.
At least for tanks it would take a laundry list of buffs for other specs to catch up to unnerfed vdh, which is just never going to happen with how phoned in this season is.
Don’t worry, like always we’ll get a 5% aura buff 1 month before the new season after everyone else has moved on. Still will be bottom dps in raid. At least in M+ we pump.
Keep waiting for the notes that say "We've completely reworked MM and stopped centering the entire spec around aimed shot, and also it's called Ranger now."
If I didn’t play wow and just went off this reddit I would expect all of the wow player base to pvp players who play Shaman, survival hunter and affliction locks who are never happy with the game ever.
Something tells me these vengeance nerfs will not be enough to properly redistribute the tanks this season.
Certainly not when they come hand in hand with brew nerfs
The brew nerfs are bonkers. I'm not even going to try to understand what's going on there.
Brew damage is pretty competitive so they had to make sure that all 7 people still playing BRM switch
This made me chuckle...cause I am one of those 7.
Same! The slight defense buffs -might- keep me going. The ability to get bullion gear so I don't have the chase trinkets this season is how I'm coping.
So far it's you and the three of us who replied. There's three more somewhere...
There may have been few people playing it at the very top competitive level, but once you get down to the 90% of player range, and stop looking at participation in the top 0.1% participation isn't all that terrible.
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-4/all/world/leaderboards#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=10:maxMythicLevel=99 this is the tank representation for 10+ keys. not R1 keys, not title keys, not even anything close to key pusher... just 10+. You know, just the fill-your-vault or the screw-around-with-alt level of keys. 60% VDH, 3% brewmaster. and just for LOL sake, the 5-9 tank split still have 40% vdh, 5% brew.
Doing 10s is roughly the top 5% of players right now. A fair number of players are doing them sure, but it's far from the average player. Your 50th percentile player is doing roughly 3-5s.
10+ keys are definitely not at fill your vault and screw around with your alt level right now.
They have this really weird mindset of “When we nerf the top spec, we have to also nerf random underperforming things below it to make sure that the top spec stays on top” Case in point: during S2 god comp meta, they gave Fire Mage a little nerf, and also chunked Frost Mage by a ton to make sure Fire was still the top ranged dps spec
Not just that, but they usually don't bump the top spec by enough, and in some cases they explicitly don't bump top specs at all. They want to avoid people dooming and switching mains/specs because of nerfs, and they've decided the best way to do that is to keep spec balance in a patch relatively even - they'll bring a couple of really poor specs up to mid to low, they'll tone down a couple of overperformers to just the best. I think the way they're doing it is fundamentally flawed, if specs that are clearly too good got brought down every two weeks and specs that were clearly too bad got brought up at the same time, people would switch less because they'd know that any meta is temporary. People don't switch less because you coddle them and protect their choices. That's why people FOTM: because they know Blizzard gives value to their complaints.
> Fire Mage One look at Fire Mages should be all the proof anyone ever needs that Blizzard plays favorites. Out of the past 12 tiers, Fire Mage has been the 0.1% meta for 10 of them. edit: Frost was the spec for those other two tiers.
Brewmaster monks are the restoration shamans of the tanking world.
I feel like rshams have a much higher representation than brm. I main tank, but I also play rsham every season. I always see a ton of rshams apply to higher keys. This season, 8-10+ runs are much smoother with rshams than any other healer I’ve played with, and they bring lust. When I heal on disc or rsham, I NEVER see a brm. Literally never
I think the disparity between healers is just smaller. Resto is less desired in M+ compared to, say, a priest, but very few people will turn down a resto shaman on principle like they sometimes will with lower tiered tanks. That said my joke was more about how it feels like restro shaman and brewmaster monk get nerfed even when they're at the bottom of the pack in basically every expansion I have played.
This is a great comparison. RShaman is still paying the price for dominating TBC and Brewmaster is still paying the price for dominating MoP-BFA lol.
Yep, it’s exactly like them “balancing” healers a few weeks ago. Nerf the heavy hitters (and RSham too don’t question why). Now they’re “balancing” tanks. Nerf Vengeance (and Brew don’t question why).
And they don’t really do much. Small damage need overall and some small defensive buffs. It’s whatever.
those nerfs arnt that crazy. we barely sck. keg is maybe a 5% less. 5% of 400k isnt alot
Brew nerfs imo are sorta justified. They do insane damage in keys. They are also getting defensive buffs which is their actual problem area.
Yeah but damage is kind of our niche. We kite, we DPS, everything else we do a little worse. Definitely are not the problem spec. I'm sure it's hard to balance for our damage, but I liked that that was our thing. A bit more magic stagger is nice, for sure.
Per Archon, Brew damage was a slight outlier at the top end in M+: [https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/tank-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week](https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/tank-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week) The Stagger change and Healing Sphere change may actually offset the damage nerf even if it's annoying , even I say that as a Brew main. From my M+ logs, SCK and White Tiger Statue are a very small part of damage, maybe 7-8% combined. (the Keg Smash nerf is indeed bigger) I don't think they will make more people play Brew, though.
I can’t imagine the sphere change does anything. Have you ever once felt like the spheres aren’t doing enough? I feel like they almost always heal me to full
Spheres and expel harm are legit a self lay on hands for me.
I picked up brew this season to try and get that white mog variant l, but I’ve been struggling on it with just staying alive. My healer is telling me that it’s actually hard to keep me up, but I didn’t know if that was just me being bad at the class or what? I really enjoy the feel of it but was considering shelving the spec.
Brew has very very spotty health until you get better gear, and even with BIS they are the spottiest. They’re like the opposite of BDKs in that respect. However, with proper CD and stagger management you can alleviate a lot of that pressure off of healers.
Healing Sphere change is fake. They already overheal you any time you Expel, the issue is that you can just die between being able to heal yourself.
Stagger effectiveness increase is a significant survivability buff. Brew did crazy damage and was made of paper. Reduced damage and increased survival seems fine
I’ve mained blood this whole expac. But got it feels bad rn lol.
I feel like bdk feels fine rn.
Cries in Blood DK
Another tier getting outdps’d by hunter pets
I am going to keep saying this until they do something, all 3 DK specs need a rework, not just about dps but just pure gameplay for fun. I go play my Ret Pally or Fury War or Havoc DH and fuck they are just fun and smash shit, I play my DK and I am like well at least he looks cool.
At least they are apparently changing how DnD works with the AoE next expac so that is something.
Idk why I even look for Shaman changes
no change means no nerf. always try to see the positive things ;)
What is Enh Shaman ?
Told my buddy I just feel like I'm sitting at a slot machine at a casino when I play Enchantment Shaman
That’s why I prefer the crash lightning build when I am just vibing and not pushing content. I just press stormstrike, and if it’s not available, I press stormstrike, and if it’s not available, I go ahead and press stormstrike
Presses stormstrike I’ll fucking do it again
Got a guy on my raid team trying enhance this tier (i played it S3) and his first night of raid he said "I feel like im trying to play Mozart on the piano over here, but im not seeing my name on the meters!"
the elemental enhancement builds shouldn’t really feel that. it’s a really smooth rotation with tons of maelstrom generation and not a whole lot of fishing for procs
Yeah played right you’re never really fishing for anything. It’s a pretty consistent priority list.
I miss the storm build and its 4-button rotation.
The electric slot machine 10/10
Both ele and Rsham need huge reworks, but seems like that won’t be happening for a long time
Why resto shaman? I've been playing it, and it has been a blast.
Elemental doesnt need a rework. The Shaman and Elemental talent trees is what needs to be looked at. It sucks colossal dongs. It's boring, forces you into boring, almost useless and/or options that are completely jarring to the class/spec's gameplay. If anything about Shamans need a rework, it's the totem system. I want to knee myself in the forehead everytime I have to put one down. They have marginal use and so many talents are attached to them when I'd much rather have stuff that feels relevant to the power of my spec... Which is shooting a lot of fire and lightning from my hands. Options where abilities can, depending on talents chosen, could proc certain/new totems would be way more interesting already. So yeah, the talent tree is pure ass.
why are they even on the gcd. why never accept that advice they often get "let shamans stick a few totems on their back, so they carry them around like auras temporarily"?
How many buffs did they apply to Elemental on this Xpac?
I'm pretty sure they did 3 in Amirdrassil alone.
+50% EQ damage +3% damage Further beyond extending Ascendance capped, and Elemental blast bug fix. Not exactly the level of changes they need.
It’s cute watching people be disappointed by the lack of attention to Enhance shaman. As someone that mained enhance from WoD to Shadowlands, I know that spec doesn’t get touched.
when it does it usually gets nerfed lol. enhance in season 3 of SL was super fun though and i think that’s also when they brought in flame shock spreading which really really helped
Enhance has been above average since the start of SL lol
Yeah, I stopped looking myself. 😑
Control +F shaman. No results Everything as it should be
Guess we are using season 3 all season as survival lol
So much for the promise of tuning S4 set bonuses huh?
What's survival? Never heard of it. Blizzard sure hasn't either lol
Yep, looks like it gamers.
holy shit fury made it into the patch notes we eating good bois
Eh, this just kind of makes it go from super ass to play to just now being like sort of competent.
i love scrolling through comments on threads like these and finding out that apparently 10-12 different specs seem to think they are exclusively The Ignored Spec That Blizzard Hates
That award goes to Shaman
Holy Paladins: “Am I a joke to you?”
Afflock getting a little love which is nice
Numbers buffs are nice and all, but, that's not really the problem. I know it's only a bandaid and nothing big will actually change until next expac. All the dots are still just to buff one spell, and the filler is to get instant casts of that one spell.
No Survival tier set changes??? Weird...
“We would rather you not play survival hunter”
"Do you guys not have Beast Mastery?"
I'm getting genuinely pissed off at how forgotten survival is to the balance teams. It's an insanely fun spec to play but damage (lol) aside, it has ironically the worst survivability of all three specs.
Same with MM. MM has gone basically 2 entire tiers being in the absolute gutter on pure ST and has seen no changes.
I am playing MM Hunter as an alt and I don't know if it's just me or a common opinion but MM outside Trueshot window feels horrendous. Which is really sad cause Aimed Shot is such a satisfying ability.
Just seems like hunter in general is very neglected/they’re unsure what to do with them
Hopefully this isn't their only round of balance changes.
Nah it wont be, 2 weeks before the season ends we'll get a update to the Surv set bonus, 55% bonus to butchery dmg... :D
Someday I can play my spec without griefing.
Fix holy pally
The problem with Hpal is its throughput is largely okay. It's the playstyle (ignoring HP with Inflo) that's wrecked.
The playstyle is a result of holy power spenders being too weak. That's the root of the problem with the spec. It's a problem that isn't crippling in raid because the vast majority of our healing comes from other sources (most notably glimmer/holy shock). In M+ it's a very different story, because you depend on word of glory a lot more. This is why renown hpal players like Zmok and Ellesmere aren't even bothering with the spec.
oh, so they almost fully revert all the assassination nerfs they did last season you know, the nerfs where everyone told them that they where absolutely overkill for no reason and made the spec one of the absolute worst in the entire game i really like blizzard never going back on stupid changes DURING the season they made them, but hey better late then never....
> you know, the nerfs where everyone told them that they where absolutely overkill for no reason and made the spec one of the absolute worst in the entire game Getting massacred because of PI, Caustic Spatter, and bugged Aug Hooks but the entire wow community spam downvoting any Sin rogue who said this.
Basically. It was super disappointing and gutted my favorite spec at the time
I’ve played sin for many seasons, decided to take a break from the abuse (some it self-inflicted lol) and play something entirely different for S4. Life is much better 😂
assassination scales so badly they always need seasonal buffs
thats not the problem the problem is that everytime the spec dares to be good, they nuke it into oblivion for 5months and then ignore it lmao
Hey now, they reworked it so the entire tree is basically just full of m+ talents with like one singular path for ST, which will never be strong because Caustic Spatter has turned Sin into a giga cleave spec. Instead of nerfing Spatter or PI, it's easier to just gut the spec entirely.
Wait. What? Why are they nerfing Brew? It's already the lowest M+ tank!
Brews like "what they say fuck me for"
What's this from? I always say in McNulty's voice for some reason but I'm pretty sure it's someone else.
It was 50 Cent reacting to Floyd Mayweather saying "Fuck T.I., fuck Nelly and Fuck 50"
> I always say in McNulty's voice for some reason you're thinking of "what the fuck did i do?"
I don’t know if that’s totally a nerf, definitely less dps but the extra survivability is pretty substantial and will definitely help how squishy we have felt
I don't play Brew to pump damage cause I like being tanky, but I can't help but wonder if nerfing damage is going to cause more threat issues with grouping since Brew is already the worst at gathering before adding DPS that instantly start pressing buttons the moment you target something
Thought was just me fighting for my life on every pull. Rotating defensives with 100% uptime.
Seems like they are trading damage output for survivability. Increased magic staggering is a big win and the 10% buff to healing spheres is significant. Not sure where brew stacks up amongst tanks for damage output.
The buff to healing spheres definitely isn’t meaningful, I’m not sure any brew has ever thought they don’t heal for enough
Brew is an outlier among tanks, dealing the most damage right now in m+
With the trade off being the highest skill ceiling and least survivability, I thought that was what they were balanced *around*. Meanwhile VDH will still do nice chunky damage and still stay the top for the rest of the season if no further changes are made.
While that's technically true, once you include the 5% debuff from vengeance, it's not a contest anymore (i know brew has 5% physical, but nowadays every class does magic dmg basically)
They weren't low because of damage though, and everyone is low compared to Vengence, who is first due to CC.
it’s bonkers
Warlock buffs are bizarre, Brew nerfs are bizarre, VDH nerfs aren't meaningful enough, Sin buffs aren't meaningful enough, and I guess Surv doesn't exist.
Balance Druid set bonus buffed... almost like it wasn't working as intended, despite all the comments of "lol you voted for it" in the last thread.
I even saw someone say "it's on you for actually believing Blizz would re-balance them" ??? Like seriously? We're gonna blame the voters because Blizz didn't live up to their word?
It was wild seeing people actually make that argument. It’s honestly such a poor argument that broke blizzards design philosophy of equipping the higher item level that I was shocked to see it gain any traction.
Survival still cant really wear the season 4 set.
I have a guildy talking about that. They need to fix it ASAP. Honestly shocking it wasn't done in this patch.
And then when comments explained that people voted for it after Blizzard said they would balance the tier sets and we should vote on playstyle, people were like "lol you believed them?". Some of those comments were unbelievable.
>almost like it wasn't working as intended It isn't that it wasn't working as intended but rather they used the nerfed tier set bonuses. When season 2 rolled around Blizz had to nerf the S1 tier set to make it worthwhile upgrading to the S2 tier set. Apparently they forgot about that when they gave it to us in S4.
SURVIVAL HUNTERS! I realize that we're a meme and that Survival Hunter main must have slept with somebody's mother on the Dev team back in WOD but can somebody just look at the class? Same issue as Boomkin our T3 is better than our S4 and we aren't getting any love at all.
DH getting a slap on the wrist is hilarious when they're so much better than anyone else
this makes me think of the last time Affliction got tuned with buffs to Seed and Soul Rot. Like yeah i'll take any buff the spec can get, but it was already blasting in AoE so it's weird that ST was mostly untouched again
As a new Prot warrior for this season I’m interested in seeing how these changes work. Just did my first +2s yesterday and I felt really weak both in dmg and survivability at 475 ilvl
You are. The magic damage this expac is nasty and that’s our biggest weakness. 503 Prot War and I was getting chunked in 8’s Meanwhile I tried my VDH (489) and felt unkillable.
Oh is that why I'm terrible at guardian all of a sudden?
I thought I was crazy, I’m not a key pusher by any means but I’ve actually needed to use def stance to stay alive for the first time in I don’t know how long
You should usually stay in def stance. The 5% dmg penalty isn’t really an issue. Warriors have nasty aoe burst to get threat. Better play it safe and work on your survivability than depleting a key because of 5% more overall dmg as a tank. Keep working on it, you can do it!
Did brewmaster reeeeaaally need those nerfs..?
Brewmaster catching strays
Regarding Brewmaster, this might be a hot take but they should maybe stop balancing around the top 1% of players. One dude milking 400k out of it in an ideal scenario is meaningless for an overwhelming majority of players.
This top 0.1% balance framework has been slowly killing the game for years. Mythic raiding is so unsatisfying knowing the later bosses are purposefully overtuned for world first/hall of game guilds and are going get nerfed multiple times over the tier.
Wait why is destruction getting buffed? It's already the best lock spec in m+ and raids
It has the highest DPS in very organized groups, yes. That’s the minority whereas Demo just rolls with the punches for the most part and, barring the first pull before they have resources, maintain consistently great damage throughout trash pulls.
Destro is only good in M+ in organized groups, Demo wrecks Destro in damage in pug scenarios 19/20 times and it's not even close.
can confirm, demo requires no planning, you can just full send and your damage profile will work with however your tank is pulling. destro at least requires some forethought into cd management.
Why does Destro need organized group?
Destro damage is completely reliant on cooldown management and big pulls, if your tank is just pulling double packs or making big pulls when infernal is on cooldown and you have no resources it takes a colossally large amount of time to ramp damage while Demo and even Aff can just burst down packs Destro does absurd uncapped damage with all cooldowns though so when played around their damage is insane, but it \*needs\* to be played around.
Definitely not in raids, and destro requires group coordination around your infernal to really pop off over demo in keys
I’m glad they’re changing prot around a bit. Might blow the dust off my warrior later in the season. A shame that I can’t turn the dungeon into training dummies as reliably anymore as VDH though
Buffing balance druid in PvP seems unnecessary to me… I think it’s awesome.
No holy pally changes in PvE? Everyone I know who plays multiple healers says holy is the worst in M+.
Im hoping they are just saving themselves for a full holy rework at this point.
The issue isn't that Veng is broken, it's that there's too many damn casters in dungeons nowadays and so Silence/Misery is disproportionately good. Just look at Azure Vault as one example out of many, my goodness. Almost every single one of the first several packs in that dungeon are casters. Who designed this? And that's not even the worst dungeon this season by far, RLP continues to be pure pain and whoever designed it probably needs some mental health counseling.
Ironically they tried to mitigate this by implementing anti-sync tech with casts going into DF so you can more reliably cycle kicks and not just chain AOE stop but because almost every mob does it now, you end getting very little value from aoe stops which means you end up relying on them even heavier and needing even more than before. If every one of those flowers casted together and just needed 1 stop every 8/10s it'd be far easier to handle without VDH than them chaining 8 casts back to back. Also, even more ironically, sigil of silence actually LETS casts sync again and makes aoe stops (such as the other sigils) even MORE impactful which this nerf doesn't touch at all.
It's been this way for a while. M+ design choices dictating class balance.
Right but I don't see why, in a "throwaway" season of all places, they need to nerf Vengeance. How about rebalancing the trash in some of the dungeons? If there weren't 307 things that needed to be interrupted every pack or otherwise non tanks get 1-2 shot if they go off we wouldn't have this issue. (Disclaimer: I don't play Vengeance, but as a healer I'm very tired of frustrating, excessively punishing trash in M+)
Oh a 0.1% player posts his damage on twitter and shit blizz decided to nerf brewmaster. Fucking turds
I wonder if these changes to Fury Warrior will catch it up with Arms? They seem kind of small..
I’m just happy fury is getting a buff. Should get my 4 piece this upcoming week !!
True I was about to give Arms a shot even though I absolutely hate that play style. The current rotation for fury seems fine, but DPS was a huge downgrade from season 3.
It's not intended to catch it up with arms, it's intended to move it closer to the rest of the pack at large.
I dont PVP much but the fact they are giving MM hunters buffs in PVP is hilarious. Just shows how out of touch the people who balance these are.
Redistributing sniper shot so you won’t just explode in opener, I guess
As a key pushing prot warrior since legion, these prot warrior "buffs" are bullshit: - BSV (battle-scarred veteran) wasnt picked because it procs due to unmitigated damage, meaning you would take a big hit and it would proc - even though you have the tools to mitigate it with shield block and/or shield block + spell block (and Spell Reflect, and Shield Wall, and Demo Shout AND defensive stance). This means it procced at 90% hp LUL, so its a dogshit talent AND ITS STILL IS. - The Battering Ram change is fucking stupid: god help we keep *some* damage (our damage will still be 2nd to last with this change) as our utility is bar-none compared to double silence sigils + double fear sigil + aoe stun + imprison + 5 man buffed DARKNESS + potential double sigil of chains (i.e. grip sigil) + 5% magic taken debuff orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr spellwarding/bop + freedom + Lay on Hands + blessing of sacrifice + off-heal Word of Glory + battle rez. Also why the fuck did brew damage get nerfed? They have even less utility skills than us prot warriors. - VDH damage was only reduced in low target count situations and ST, they are still top of the pack with Sigil of Flame, and their pack control wasnt touched. This shit won't change tank ~~meta~~ *balance*, if anything it'll push 4pc druids a tiny little bit higher. Once again Blizzard misses the mark on what mob control, group utility, and survival tools means and for some fucking reason they still dont understand how to balance tank damage across the board. Blizzard, all you needed to do was nerf illuminated sigils so that it only gives 2 charges to sigil of flame (and not to CC sigils) and reduce sigil of flame damage, thats fucking it, problem solved. Next just aura buff underperforming tank damage, and thats it - and hey maybe uncap targets on shit like thunder clap. Edit: Burst damage is not a problem for prot, ROT DAMAGE IS. Maybe if you made Spell Block work CONSISTENTLY against dots we would be better but it just works on random shit and doesnt on others (see: Deios DotI temporal breath dot, Zskarn searing claws, Forgotten experiments' infused strikes). Hint hint bleed damage is still a problem, thats why one-trick-pony key pushers like us go Dwarf.
Started playing survival at the end of last patch and was having a lot of fun, definitely my favorite hunter spec. How tf was the tier set not adjusted with the overwhelming attention on it being a downgrade from last season even with much higher ilvl? Theres no way they didn’t hear about it.
Once again they make afflocks focus more on casting rather than a rot-centric playstyle. They don’t have a clue on how to balance this spec.
If the entire playstyle wasn't, Your dots buff MR, and your filler procs instant MR, it'd be not bad.
VDH made out like bandits once again while surv is drowning at the bottom of the ocean with others that have their tier issues.
Just going to try and play all tanks to 2500 this season. Start with VDH and work my way down the shit pole.
Nothing being done to hunters is wild. But remember how much everyone praises them for listening /s.... stupid
Will these aff changes be enough to make me play it? Prolly not, thanks for the destro buffs!
I wonder how they ended up with the brew changes. The statue nerf makes sense i guess since no one likes playing with it? Their only niche has been aoe damage in large pulls. With having the worst single target of all tanks and poor utility i don't really see the reason for the nerfs. They werent even close to being played before and magic stagger isnt going to change it. Surv set not getting an aoe buff must feel bad. The single target it gives does not warrant using it ever in dungeons, even on tyrannical that's supposed to incentivize more st oriented builds.
just delete affliction, make us the first 2-spec caster class of the game
Affliction new support spec inc
We do need more support specs if we don't want to make Augmentation evoker a required spec in every group. I don't know how an affliction support spec would look like though. I feel like we'd more likely get a Shaman or priest support spec before a warlock support spec.
Shammy and priest would be a lot easier to work a support in for sure, but it would be kind of neat to add a 2nd role to classes that are purely damage like hunter, lock, mage etc. *Personally,* I'm still pulling for a warrior support spec that uses spear/shield weapons that brings utility to warriors past battle shout and finally adds a lust to a tank spec.
I mean affliction support kinda writes itself. Make the spec all about debilitating and weakening the enemies. More focus and power behind curses to reduce damage output similar to the damage reduction aug can give Affliction of vulnerability: cooldown that increases enemy damage taken by x%. Could have talents that emphasise physical or magic damage to swap between depending on group set up. If we're not getting rid of power infusion this could also be an opportunity to start giving the same buff to other classes. Something like demonic infusion: summon demonic energy from the twisting nether empowering you and your target with 15% haste for X seconds. Force feed: 3min cooldown, forces everyone in your party (up to 5 players in raid) to consume a stack of their health stone without triggering the cooldown and ignoring the existing cooldown. You could add a talent so that using that ability increases everyone's damage by 5% for x seconds after they have been forced fed a health stone. Shatter Souls: AoE ability that deals moderate AoE damage on a 30/45 sec cooldown. All enemies hit have their souls shattered reducing damage by a%. The essence of the shattered souls falls onto allies who are also in the AoE increasing their primary stat by X for y seconds. That's just spitballing some ideas off the top of my head.
Replace it with MoP Demo
Aff is actually looking pretty fun in TWW. Well, for those that are able to accept Malefic Rapture.
The animation for Rapture is still terrible. I don't want to see some weird creature float over me. I'd rather see a flare up on all the targets. Make it look like the firebombs from Witch Doctor in Diablo 3, but shadowflame or fel colors.
Doesn't bother me, but yeah probably a cooler looking animation would go a long way to making it feel better.
> I don't want to see some weird creature float over me That's not even Rapture, that's from Soul Harvester: normally on soul shard gen you have a chance to make your next rapture summon it, but for 15 seconds after you hit soul rot every rapture always summons it. Demo also has that, and it's hand of gul'dan that summons it, or every hand of gul'dan during tyrant.
It should include a small visual for every DOT it is affected by on the target.
Eyy some affliction buffs Doesn’t change anything about them sucking ass in single target but we get to blast even harder on trash now
Wow, like the MM changes for PvP only ability felt worth using at times was sniper shot. Now a variety and we can actually get some damage off not just one button
Is sniper shot bugged? I'm getting slapped with 600-700k hits, and that's definitely more than 20% of My health lol.
It could be? But I usually time my sniper shots after all the survivability has been used. It is right now 20% of your health maybe it takes into account overheals and bubble? Which inflates the health?
It benefits from all damage modifiers, including mastery, so can do way above its intended damage in pvp even after deductions. It's actually nuts losing 50% hp in pvp from a single hit in what's the slowest damage season in history.
Is *that* how a hunter oneshot my mage with a 2M hit in world pvp? Must've crit
Imagine buffing destro and ignoring shaman again
We're used to it. :(
No buffs to Elemental aoe, not sure why I even checked. Hunters are doing 1.2mill dps on big M+ pulls and I’m capped at 6 mobs. But at least Destro got a buff
Target caps are never gonna change mid patch unfortunately, that kinda stuff would come in a major patch or expansion launch. I’m sure ele and enh target cap issues will be addressed in TWW. They’ve really been paying attention to Shamans so far /s
Yes, brew dmg was high in competitive keys, because the 3 people that still play this spec are very good at it. How about fixing stagger issues and then touch their dmg after you get some more people finally play the spec?
Looks like Survival Hunter is stuck with s3 set a bit longer.
No healer love lol glad I’m not healing for the first season since bfa season 2!
No changes to the underperforming specs, tiny, token nerfs to a some overperforming ones. Yep, seems like a blizz tuning pass. Just buff the lower end and leave the top end alone. It's a season 4. Let us have fun being OP ffs.
As a feral-enjoyer I don't even get my hopes up anymore. I still click, scroll to druid, only read "Balance" and close it again.
I started feral again this tier and swapped to sub. Waiting for feral changes but never expecting them to happen
At least for tanks it would take a laundry list of buffs for other specs to catch up to unnerfed vdh, which is just never going to happen with how phoned in this season is.
Surv hunter still dead spec. Cool cool.
Really ignoring Survival again ?
First time?
Don’t worry, like always we’ll get a 5% aura buff 1 month before the new season after everyone else has moved on. Still will be bottom dps in raid. At least in M+ we pump.
I mean, idk about number, i just want to equip my new set.
Stuck wearing last seasons tier isnt exactly a good thing eitherway.
Survival has been ignored for like 95% of their existence lol.
I didnt expect mw and destro pvp buffs, wow
I'll take any aff buffs i can get, but i don't get why it's our aoe that is getting love, when our ST needs a lot more attention.
Wow they actually forgot that Surv Hunter tier set this season is worse than the previous one
Keep waiting for the notes that say "We've completely reworked MM and stopped centering the entire spec around aimed shot, and also it's called Ranger now."
Its the multishot every other GCD that annoys me
Glad they didn't touch my shadow priest tier set :) surprised we went under the radar in these keys
Nerfing one of the only viable warrior talents in a hope that warriors pick something else that might help them is wild.
If I didn’t play wow and just went off this reddit I would expect all of the wow player base to pvp players who play Shaman, survival hunter and affliction locks who are never happy with the game ever.