Daily Thoughts: 4.0.3a Feedback Pt.1 – PreLogin

As of this writing, servers are still down, and I’m not on a computer with WoW anyway, so I can’t see all the massively redesigned zones in Azeroth. I can’t make a tauren paladin or personally check out any of the changes happening today. What I can see though, are the patch notes for patch 4.0.3a, which contains a ton of class changes along with the shattering of the world.

Good news for those who wanted to try out their new race/class combos along with the option to race change existing characters to one of the new pairings, as soon as WoW is live you’ll be able to do both of these things. This does not include worgen/goblin toons which won’t be available until Dec 7th at cataclysm’s release. Also, I’m pretty excited about the 20% reduction in leveling experience required for the 70-80 leveling bracket. I might get around to finishing up my level 72 rogue before cata after all. Join me after the break for more, including some class specific thoughts.

Another big change that will affect everyone is the nerf to mortal strike effects. This isn’t a nerf to any specific class as many have the same debuff.

Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks, Wound Poison, Widow Venom, Permafrost, Improved Mind Blast, Monstrous Bite, and Legion Strike now reduce healing by 10%, down from 25%.

I’m personally happy about the next change, as I’ve always been of the opinion that fear is the most annoying and cheapest ability in WoW. Even when I’m playing my lock.

Effects which are broken from taking too much damage (Fear, Frost Nova, Entangling Roots, etc.) now break automatically from about half as much damage taken as before.

This also isn’t a class specific nerf although locks and spriests will likely feel it the hardest. I’m not going to have the time/space to touch on all the changes, but I will hit up the biggest ones or ones that I’m most impressed/depressed by.

Druids:

Bears are going to lose a ton of stamina. The bonus of bear form is being cut in half (20%>10%) and the resto tree talent that adds stamina to bear is seeing similar treatment. Although my druid isn’t even main spec tank, it is a little disappointing to see yet another drop in tanking stamina. I’m not a fan of the overall closeness in health dps and tanks will be come cata.

Mages:

Looking through the changes, it feels like mages got an overall buff, something I feel like they didn’t need. Even after the last round of nerfs they didn’t have much trouble topping the meters in raid or doing 50%+ of my warriors health in PVP in a single attack.

Paladins:

The changes to ret confuse me a little. We gain 50% bonus to exorcism damage yet lose 25% of the dot damage from Seal of Truth. I feel like this makes Paladins more bursty in PVP yet will be a net decrease in dps for raiding, an overall status blizzard seemed to be trying very hard to move away from during WotLK. Ret has divine storm redesigned to be much closer to the way it was before HP, also scaling with haste yet sharing a CD with crusader strike. Hopefully will help our weakened AOE. Holy gets a 5 minute, free (with glyph) beacon and a spammable AOE heal. Even though our perma-self-beacon doesn’t proc off self heals anymore, I’m overall pretty psyched about the changes for holy. Although I don’t play a prot pally, it does look like they had a decent buff, which is odd considering the nerf to warrior tanking. Poor warriors (see below)

Rogues:

Decent combat and poison buffs. Good day for rogues.

Warlocks:

*Insert nerfbat comment*. I don’t feel like anyone was surprised to see locks take a damage decrease, but it is still pretty crazy to see such a list of abilities going down.

Warriors:

Although the lock nerf has been the talk of the town since the patch notes were released, Warriors truly got hit even harder. Fury (and some Arms ) saw nearly all of its strikes damage decreased by 17% (as opposed to 12% down for locks). All abilities that use weapon damage have had their % of weapon damage lowered by a significant amount. Even protection lost some of their precious threat. I feel like warriors might have been doing a little too much damage, at least for fury, but it seems to me like a 5% decrease would have been okay. My warrior didn’t feel like he was 17% too strong.

Shaman/Priests

Shaman healing saw a slight nerf with this patch, nothing too serious. And I can’t really comment about the priest changes having very little experience in the area. Readers feel free to comment your thoughts on this.

Not all is doom and gloom from the patch notes, despite a hefty amount damage decreases both to classes specifically and all toons between 1-79.

Mysterious Egg now takes only 3 days to turn into a Cracked Egg and has a slightly greater chance of awarding the Reins of the Green Proto-Drake.

 Although my main has this already, it would be nice to get a cool drake for some of my toons that don’t have one yet. I see oraces rep farming in my future. What do you think about the changes so far?

Check out the patch notes here.