#1 - March 17, 2016, 6:41 p.m.
We have another alpha build going up today. No new major features in this one, but a bunch of class and artifact updates have been made:
- Class Status – We’re continuing to iterate on our class abilities and talents, based on testing and feedback. This build has many revisions scattered around the classes, but here are some highlights:
- Tank Self-Healing – Several tank heals have switched from being %-of-Max-Health to AP-based healing. This resolves unintended scaling with the massive health increase that artifacts provide.
- Enhancement Shaman – Revisions to several talents, and a couple new talents.
- Blood Death Knight – Tweaks to the core combat abilities, including Death and Decay cooldown reduced, and Blood Strike applying a snare.
- Retribution Paladin – Several talents have been rearranged and revised.
- Survival Hunter – Several changes to core abilities and talents. Farstrider buffed significantly. Traps no longer share a cooldown, and all of their cooldowns massively reduced. Fixed many talents to deal reasonable damage instead of placeholder numbers (NOTE: This doesn’t mean that we’ve done exact tuning yet, just that they’re in the right ballpark now).
- Outlaw Rogue – Roll the Bones now rolls 6 dice instead of 5. A subtle change, but this should resolve the rotational issue of wanting to reroll until you get a perfect roll. Jolly Roger tweaked to better synergize with the artifact.
- Warlocks – Demonic Servitude moved into Grimoire of Supremacy’s talent slot (and took Grimoire of Supremacy’s name). New Soul Conduit talent in its place.
- Unholy Death Knight – Tweaks to the core combat abilities to reduce randomness in Festering Wound application.
- Warriors – Storm Bolt and Shockwave adjusted to clearly be utility abilities, not DPS increases. Battle Cry returns to Protection, and Intimidating Shout returns to Arms and Fury.
- Brewmaster Monk – Celestial Fortune, a new passive, added to give defensive value to Critical Strike.
- Holy Paladin – Level 100 talents reduced to a more reasonable power level, and core abilities buffed to compensate.
- Artifact Trait Status – Many artifact traits have been revised in this build. The following artifacts have received the most changes in this build:
- Beast Mastery Hunter – Several traits rearranged and revised. Hati has a new visual effect.
- Discipline Priest – Active ability revised, and now triggers Atonement. Several traits revised.
- Fire Mage – Phoenix Flames is now an active ability, separate from Pyroblast. Several other traits revised to accommodate.
- Guardian Druid – Tweaks to a few traits.
- Blood Death Knight – Revision to several traits.
- Outlaw Rogue – Active ability revised to play better with the rotation. A few traits revised.
- Assassination Rogue – Several traits revised. In particular, Blood of the Assassinated applies a temporary increase to Rupture damage, instead of an additional bleed, solving synergy issues with Venomous Wounds.
- Enhancement Shaman – Revisions to the active ability, and a couple traits. Note that there is still one trait planning to be redesigned, due to there being duplicate effects.
- Protection Warrior – Active ability revised to be much stronger. Several traits revised.
- Fury Warrior – A few traits revised.
- Arms Warrior – A few traits revised.
- Holy Paladin – Artifact now includes a passive +30% Armor buff, to offset not having a shield.
- Balance Druid – Tweaks to the active abilities and Goldrinn’s Fang.
- Brewmaster Monk – A few traits revised.
- Feral Druid – A few traits revised to maintain a better balance between bleeds and direct damage.
- Affliction Warlock – The active ability has been redesigned, and escaped souls are no longer attackable. Further revision to traits to accommodate this new active ability are still in the works.