Blizzard has been hard at work with bringing changes to the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Beta. Despite the delays that the expansion’s release has suffered as a whole, the balancing of classes continues on, helping to ensure the game releases in as good a shape as possible.
There’s plenty of changes to discuss, but the changes to Death Knights and Mages – Fire Mages specifically – are pretty sizeable. While Death Knights are seeing some powerful nerfs, Fire Mages are being buffed quite a bit.
One of the first things to note is the Off-Balance passive being applied to Frost Death Knights. This passive prevents players from benefitting from Runeforging enchantment bonuses for thirty seconds after swapping weapons, which hits two-handed Frost pretty hard.
Another nerf hitting Frost is a reduction to the damage Obliterate deals for two-handed Death Knights. Might of the Frozen Wastes increases Obliterate damage by 30% now, a reduction from the 35%. The Killing Machine proc chance remains unchanged.
Obliterate itself has been nerfed as well. The attack has had its attack power scaling reduced for both two-handed and dual-wielding Death Knights, reducing the damage considerably. Pillar of Frost has been hit as well, lasting 12 seconds instead of 15 now and having its cooldown increased to a full minute.
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Unholy has seen two nerfs as well, with Unholy Blight having the damage of its AoE disease reduced to be 27.832% of attack power, an almost 2% reduction from the original 29.61%. Unholy Pact now has its Shadow damage reduced as well, from 17.5% down to 15.75%.
Fire Mages aren’t feeling the same woes, though. The spec has seen a number of buffs that are making the class look significantly better. Fire Blast, to start with, had its damage increased from 72% of spell power up to 79.2%, a sizeable boost for sure.
Fireball had its damage increased by 6% as well, moving from 59% of spell power all the way up to 65%, a huge increase when considering that fireball is a dominant source of damage for the spec. Fireball’s older brother, Pyroblast, had its damage increased from 123.9% up to 136.3% of spell power as well.
Finally, Flamestrike, one of the primary AoE abilities for fire mages, has had its damage increased as well. While the movement speed reduction remains unchanged, the damage has been increased from 57.5% to 66.13%.
And those are the most recent changes to the classes! They’re far from the only changes being sent to the Beta, but they’re some sizeable ones that players should be aware of. There’s likely to be quite a bit more tuning, so keep your eye out for future changes!