wow Blue Posts Round-up: Feb 27

[Stan 5,036]

Today's blue posts round-up covers a lot of PTR class discussions, like changes to the new golden 7.2 Unholy Death Knight Trait (Festering Talons) or Druid's Intimidating Roar. On Twitter, we learn there are currently no plans to increase the amount of Legendary items one can wear in 7.2. It may come in future, but they're undecided.

Death Knight

The new 7.2 golden trait for Unholy (Festering Talons) will be updated in a future build.

Sigma (Source)

The gold trait should be changed in an upcoming PTR build to something that doesn't add Festering Wounds (and therefore resources and GCDs) to the rotation, since Unholy is still a bit swamped.

Druid

Intimidating Roar will root targets instead of snaring them in 7.2.

Sigma (Source)

While I am somewhat loath to respond to a thread where 23 of 25 posts are by the same person (and I apologize in advance to my colleagues from Community about this), it turns out that this is being changed in 7.2. Intimidating Roar will root targets rather than snaring them by 50%. We felt the current behavior was inconsistent with the tooltip, and also that the talent shouldn't feel like it adds risk to the ability that isn't present in the untalented version.

Mage

Further tuning for Frost Mages is underway.

Sigma (Source)

Thanks for the detailed look. We agree there could be some cleanup around proc minutiae and Winter's Chill timing, including getting rid of the possibility of the double Ice Lance.

Few other minor notes:
--Frozen Touch is slightly underpowered, but we likely have to be careful with it until we do something about the possibility of infinite Thermal Void rotations.
--Glacial Spike is intended to double-dip crit on the Icicle (Mastery: Icicles) portion of the damage, but it would be better if it didn't double-dip % damage buffs such as the ones you mentioned.
--Glacial Eruption should be on PTR soon, but it will be able to Shatter.

Rogue

Discussion revolving around Roll the Bones and True Bearing.

Sigma (Source)

Overall it would be more ideal if the Roll the Bones buffs were closer in value. True Bearing has gradually crept up over the course of the expansion (around the time of Legion launch, I believe Shark Infested Waters was considered best, and they haven't changed much since then). I expect True Bearing climbs in value as the rotation gets faster due to stat increases and other bonuses being added over the course of the expansion, which all feed into the True Bearing positive feedback loop. Simply making it baseline would speed up the spec even further and contribute to the energy flood and other issues that it can have. While the similar effect was passive in Warlords, I'm sure (I haven't dug into this closely) that the Legion spec churns combo points much more rapidly. In any case the Legion version of True Bearing has the added synergy with Marked for Death that heaps even more combo points into the rotation during True Bearing.

Point being, while there's not a specific plan yet for balancing out the different Roll the Bones buffs, we agree that it would be better they were more even again. Longer-term, there's something to be said for tweaking the rules/probabilities of Roll the Bones in a way that would further reduce the value of rerolling frequently.

Warlock

Afflicition should feel most at home when applying dots to multiple targets (multi-dotting) and if Tier 20 Set Bonuses (Item - Warlock T20 Affliction 2P Bonus //  Item - Warlock T20 Affliction 4P Bonus) interfere, they will get changed. Overall, different specs within pure DPS classes should have better delineated distinct strengths than they have right now.

Sigma (Source)

We do agree that Affliction should feel most at home when it is applying DoTs to multiple targets. With specs like this where the basic mechanics and history of the spec lean towards being strong in one area, there's often a fine line to draw on how it should perform in the other areas (here, single-target damage). It shouldn't feel useless, but should feel like other players may have the advantage there. It's fine for a talent like Malefic Grasp to exist, but this logic probably implies it's slightly stronger than would be ideal. It's good feedback on the preliminary T20 set bonuses that they might push Affliction _away_ from feeling good when multi-dotting, which is something we'd want to avoid.

More broadly and looking ahead to the future, we agree that different specs--especially different specs within a pure DPS class--should have better delineated distinct strengths than they currently have in some cases. That doesn't mean the magnitude of the difference has to be very large (see the "useless" comment above). Especially in a context like single-target DPS, which is the subject of intense analysis and scrutiny, even a few % of difference in DPS is more than enough for players to notice and take seriously as a strength or weakness of a spec. Simply that it should be more clear what the scenario is that each spec has to look forward to as the place where it stands out, such as sustained multi-dotting for Affliction, or situations that allow Destruction to leverage Havoc especially well.

Twitter

• There are no plans for 7.2 to increase the number of Legendary items you can wear (it may come in the future).
• Power Ascended is the gating behind new pets, Class Mount tints. To purchase them, one needs a fully- unlocked Artifact weapon.
  • There are only four pets (3 for Death Knights, 1 for Monk), a Pepe toy for Demon Hunters and different Class Mount tints that you get for additional Order Resources.

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