The Ultimate Warlock Guide

New Class Changes in 2.4

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

It looks like those fake 2.4 patch notes weren't completely fake after all.
Here's the recent class changes from mmo-champion:

Druid

  • Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
  • Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
  • Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.

Hunter
  • Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Mage
  • Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
  • Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
  • Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
  • Improved Fire Ward has become Molten Shields.
  • New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Paladin
  • Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
  • Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
  • Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
  • Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Priest
  • Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
  • Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
  • Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.

Rogue
  • Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
  • Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
  • Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.

Shaman
  • Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
  • Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
  • Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.

Warlock
  • Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
  • Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
  • Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.


It will be interesting to see how some of these changes will affect smaller arena brackets, especially 2v2. Paladins should finally be able to do something against warlocks, since their Holy Shock is buffed moderately, and Turn Evil working on pets should give them a chance to drink also.

I'm sure a lot of shaman will easily find 2 talent points to get improved Ghost Wolf in enhancement tree, which will then make it instant cast. Tremor Totem changes will mostly benefit versus warlocks, but we'll destroy them anyway.

Rogues are getting buffed again (what a surprise!), Improved Backstab talent will improve Mutilate damage, in addition to Backstab. I guess too many of them specced Shadowstep as Blizzard wanted.

As for priests, with Power Infusion's spell haste they will spam Mana Burns like mad; I would lie if I said I like it.

Feral druids are getting a nice buff, but it won't help them one bit. There's still not much utility they can bring as restoration druids, especially in 2v2. Restoration set's 4-piece bonus will be changed to a bonus to Regrowth. I was just getting used to the run speed increase, but the nerf is necesarry so I can live with it. I'm not too happy about Lifebloom nerf either; yes, druids are strong healers in 2v2, but I'm afraid this will have huge impact in PvE where I don't feel as strong as some other classes.

There's no word about warlock's pets not scaling, so the change is either delayed or indeed a bug.

Here's something non-class related.
A few new neck pieces dropped from Twin Eredar on PTR, which have resilience. Sin'Dorei Pendant of Conquest, Salvation and Triumph.
If you missed my rant about such items check it out here, but I'll say it again, get PvP items away from PvE!

> New class changes in 2.4

Posted by H at 3:38 PM