wow Hotfixes: August 2 - Mobility Changes for Death Knights & Paladins

[Zadina 923]

More hotfixes went live yesterday/earlier today, bringing mobility buffs to Paladins and mobility nerfs to Unholy Death Knights.

Here is the list of the August 2 hotfixes:

Blizzard Entertainment

Classes

Death Knight

• The Unholy specialization no longer includes Death’s Advance.
• Wraith Walk’s cooldown has been reduced from 60 to 45 seconds, which is reduced to 30 seconds by Lingering Apparition.

Mage

• Ice Nova is no longer freezing the animations of NPC and player characters.

Monk

• Jade Serpent Statue should not stop channeling Soothing Mist when the player does, unless Ancient Mistweaver Arts is active.
• Soothing Mist should no longer fail to cast when repeatedly applied.

Paladin

• Divine Steed is now granted to all Paladins at level 28.
• The new talent Cavalier is available to be chosen at level 30 (Holy), 60 (Protection), and 90 (Retribution). This replaces Blessing of Salvation for Protection Paladins.
• Cavalier grants two charges to Divine Steed.

Priest

• When an adversary prevents a Priest from using Holy spells, Dispel Magic and Shackle Undead are properly locked out for the length of the interrupt effect.

Dungeons and Raids

• Fixed a bug that was preventing some players’ raid lockouts from being reset as intended.
• Increased the adjusted item level of players in Burning Crusade and Cataclysm Timewalking dungeons.
• Fixed a bug that caused the map to be unviewable in Temple of Atal’hakkar (Sunken Temple).
• Throne of Thunder
  • Lei Shen again charges conduits when he is close to them.

NPCs

• Morta'gya the Keeper in Hinterlands should now spawn again about a minute after being killed.

Pets

• Hunter, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, and Death Knight pets have been trained to move around more smoothly and better adjust to player pathing when the player is moving.

Quests

• Winter Hyacinth is now able to be looted for the quest “A Worthy Weapon”.

(source)

Community Manager Lore had an explanation for the mobility changes for Death Knights and Paladins. As far as Death Knights are concerned, the Death's Advance buff meant that Unholy Death Knights would have more mobility than the team wished. It's still weird, though, to see the 15% movement speed buff, that has been available to DKs ever since Wrath of the Lich King, being removed.

Lore

Death Knights are meant to have lower mobility than other melee classes, but feel very strong once they’re in range. That said, we agree that they need a little help with their on-demand movement options. In an upcoming hotfix, we’ll be lowering the cooldown of Wraith Walk to 45 seconds, so you can close those gaps more regularly.

This change will give Unholy a bit too much mobility, thanks to the passive 15% movement speed increase from Death’s Advance. Unholy’s already been a little stronger than intended, so to make up for the Wraith Walk buff, we’ll be removing Death’s Advance. The end result of these changes is that all Death Knights will have higher on-demand mobility, and Unholy will have lower passive mobility.

We’ll be applying these changes via hotfix very soon.

(source)

On the other hand, Paladins severely lacked mobility in Legion. Blizzard has heard their prayers and has made Divine Steed a baseline ability for all Paladin specs. A new talent, Cavalier, will grant 2 charges to this ability.

Lore

We’ve been hearing your feedback about Paladin mobility, and agree that it’s a bit lacking at the moment, especially for Holy and Retribution. In the very near future, we’ll be making the following changes:

• Divine Steed is now baseline for ALL Paladins (not just Protection)
• A new talent, Cavalier, replaces Divine Steed in the Holy and Retribution talent trees:

  • Cavalier: Divine Steed now has 2 charges.
• For Protection, Cavalier replaces the Blessing of Salvation talent, which is no longer available.

Prior to patch 7.0.3, this change would have required a new patch in order to apply. Fortunately, we have some exciting new behind-the-scenes tech that allows us to make changes like these via hotfix! As a result, we’ll be pushing this to live servers in the very near future.

(source)

[demonardvark 556]

I present my articulated and education opinion on the Death Knight Changes

Thank you for listening

[Zadina 923]

You guys have taken one hit after the other these past two days :p

[Mistmoore 9]

"Mobility Changes" read as "Crippling Nerfs"

[demonardvark 556]

23 minutes ago, Zadina said:

You guys have taken one hit after the other these past two days :p

We more or less new it was coming, sadly I can think of two more likely nerfs we'll see. Of course people complain and have conspiracy theories but I think wow just doesn't want hero classes to be strong outside of their introductory expansion. In HFC frost was top dps for two days and they did an emergency nerf that friday. 

Clawing shadows may have been understandable, it was a bit too strong and allowed us to ignore class mechanics, however, the mobility nerf is a big slap in the face. If we don't spend two tiers of talents we have 0 mobility and limited defense mechanisms. Most raid mechanics boil down to "don't stand in fire" well now we can't help it T_T. However, combine this with the loss of gorefiends in the transition it begs a question, why bring a DK to a raid? Those spots were already hard to get but now, they will be all but impossible to get, especially in pugs. 

[Zadina 923]

4 minutes ago, Mistmoore said:

"Mobility Changes" read as "Crippling Nerfs"

Had to keep it neutral in the title, since the mobility changes for Paladins were positive.

 /pat to all my Douchebag Death Knight friends out there!

[Mistmoore 9]

1 minute ago, demonardvark said:

We more or less new it was coming, sadly I can' think of two more likely nerfs we'll see. Of course people complain and have conspiracy theories but I think wow just doesn't want hero classes to be strong outside of their introductory expansion. In HFC frost was top dps for two days and they did an emergency nerf that friday. 

Clawing shadows may have been understandable, it was a bit too strong and allowed us to ignore class mechanics, however, the mobility nerf is a big slap in the face. If we don't spend two tiers of talents we have 0 mobility and limited defense mechanisms. Most raid mechanics boil down to "don't stand in fire" well now we can't help it T_T. However, combine this with the loss of gorefiends in the transition it begs a question, why bring a DK to a raid? Those spots were already hard to get but now, they will be all but impossible to get, especially in pugs. 

This so much. DKs have traditionally had shit mobility but the old Death's Advance allowed us to not die at least. Doesn't Wraith Walk break on damage too? And Unholy spec has ALWAYS had 15% increased run speed. I don't see how all of a sudden with Wraith Walk we have too much mobility. If I weren't a worgen I would feel like my feet were glued to the ground.

[Mistmoore 9]

Just now, Zadina said:

Had to keep it neutral in the title, since the mobility changes for Paladins were positive.

 /pat to all my Douchebag Death Knight friends out there!

Paladin changes are fine but DK's have always had shit mobility and still do even with the current Death's Advance. This change makes no sense to me. The clawing shadows one makes some sense but I don't get why it wasn't nerfed for pvp. I guess they didn't want DKs doing too much damage during ranged burn phases or to bring it closer to other talents? DPS tweaks i'm fine with but when they make my class feel like I'm slogging through the mud even more it gets annoying.

[demonardvark 556]

25 minutes ago, Mistmoore said:

This so much. DKs have traditionally had shit mobility but the old Death's Advance allowed us to not die at least. Doesn't Wraith Walk break on damage too? And Unholy spec has ALWAYS had 15% increased run speed. I don't see how all of a sudden with Wraith Walk we have too much mobility. If I weren't a worgen I would feel like my feet were glued to the ground.

Well in addition you can't attack during Wraith Walk, if you do it cancels out. Middle of DA phase and big damage spike comes, well you either take it to the face and potentially die, or live and suffer huge dps loss. Pick your poison.

Even better Corpse shield and lingering apparition are in the same talent tier. So, you can only choose between meat shield and having some mitigation or reduce the CD on wraith walk and having microscopically less crappy mobility. 

[ghostdeini 12]

4 hours ago, Mistmoore said:

 And Unholy spec has ALWAYS had 15% increased run speed. I don't see how all of a sudden with Wraith Walk we have too much mobility.

This is exactly what I was thinking.  The speed boost was one of the things I always liked about Unholy spec, and it's been around since DKs were introduced.  Wraith Walk isn't a game changing ability, so why does it warrant taking away Death's Advance?

[Kirr 15]

5 hours ago, Mistmoore said:

"Mobility Changes" read as "Crippling Nerfs"

They don't want 2 hero class competiting for legit Tank / DPS in raid... R.I.P. Raiding Death Knight...

[Shells 64]

On 8/3/2016 at 8:39 PM, Kirr said:

They don't want 2 hero class competiting for legit Tank / DPS in raid... R.I.P. Raiding Death Knight...

Think your right