MOGS

WOW Patch 4.3: Hour of Twlight

With the advent of patch 4.3, a multitude of new dungeons have been added.  We have End Time, which is a 5 player heroic dungeon that gives you a look at the future of Azeroth should you fail to stop Deathwing.  The Well of Eternity, another 5 player heroic, takes you back 10,000 years to retrieve the Dragon Soul.  Hour of Twilight is the last 5 man, where you must escort Thrall and the Dragon Soul to Wyrmrest Temple to begin the assault on Deathwing.  The 10 and 25 man raid dungeon is Hour of Twilight.  Here, you must help Thrall and the Dragon Aspects bring an end to the Black Dragonflight.  You take on Deathwing in one of three different difficulty settings.

Some of the new features that have been added are the Raid finder, Transmogrification, and Void Storage.  The Raid finder helps you find a pick-up raid for a certain difficulty setting of end game content, such as one of the three levels for Deathwing.  Transmogrification lets you change the appearance of one piece of armor into another.  Lastly, Void Storage lets you store items so that you can free up space in your bank.

Each class has had a number of important changes as well.  I will go over the most important tweaks.  In general, holding agro while tanking has been made easier.  Threat generated while in tanking mode has been increased to 500% damage done, up from 300%.  Also, all of the 10% increased attack power buffs have doubled to provide 20% more melee AP, while ranged AP buff stays at 10%.

For Death Knights, Death Strike will now always heal, even if the attack misses, or is dodged/parried.  This is great, and will alleviate some PVP frustration when you are really counting on that heal landing.  The armor bonus from Blood presence is now 55%, up from 30%.  The DK’s pets will now inherit their master’s crit and spell penetration stats, which will buff the ghoul and gargoyle in the already powerful unholy tree.

Feral Druids have had their swipe in Cat form reduced to 340% weapon damage, down from 415%.  Not surprising given the amount of damage feral druids can output so quickly.  In Bear form, you now have a Stamina bonus of 20%, up from 10%.  This, is coupled with 55% armor bonus for Druids under 40, will help them tank lower level instances.  Cyclone and Entangling Roots now suffer from reduced spell pushback.

One of the biggest changes for Hunters is that Widow Venom now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.  This will make Hunters more powerful in PVP, increasing their utility and importance to an Arena team.  The Beast Mastery tree received some buffs, for example now Animal Handler increases Attack Power by 30%, up from 25%, and Burrow Attack now does approximately 20% more damage.  Lastly, Explosive Shot damage has been increased by 15%.  I will include Rogues here, since their only notable change is that Wound Poison now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.  This will make it easier for Rogues to get kills in PVP, and increase the effectiveness of their surprise attacks.

Mages have had the biggest changes to their fire tree.  Fireball damage has been increased by 17%.  Also, Pyroblast’s direct damage has been increased by 26%, and its damage over time has been increased by 100%.  Moreover, Living Bombs damage over time has been increased by 10%, and explosion damage has been increased by 120%.  Combustion’s DOT’s can now crit.  All of these changes are great, and will increase the raw power of fire in PVP and PVE.

For Paladins, Holy Radiance now has a 3.0-second cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target.  Group members within 10 yards of the target are healed instantly, and also receive a HOT that ticks every 1 second for 3 seconds.  The holy tree received a number of alterations, most of which are buffs.  Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 10/20/30% for 60 seconds, which helps Paladins mana management in long fights.  Ret has had Sanctified Retribution nerfed, it now increases the critical hit chance of Hammer of Wrath by 2/4/6%, down from 20/40/60%.

Priest’s Divine Hymn will now heal 5 targets up from 3.  Also Heavenly Voice is a new talent that increases the healing done by Divine Hymn by 50/100%, and reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 2.5/5 minutes.  These changes makes this spell much more useful to save your party with when things go awry.  Also, Spirit of Redemption has been rebuilt to address a few functionality issues and responsiveness.

Shamans have had Wind Shear’s base cooldown increased to 15 seconds, up from 6 seconds.  This is a big nerf for Shamans in PVP, who have gotten use to have an on demand spell interrupt every 6 seconds.  The Reverberation talent in the elemental tree now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 5/10 seconds to compensate for this.  Another talent in this tree, Elemental Fury, now removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.  Being able to spam Chain Lighting in PVP and PVE will be amazing in those situations where you have multiple targets grouped together.  For Enhancement Shamans, Mental Quickness now causes spells to behave as though the Shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power.  Finally, Restoration sees Ancestral Healing causing the shaman’s heals to increase the target’s maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target’s maximum health, for 15 seconds.

Warlocks received a buff to Soul Fire, it now scales with 72.6% of spell power, up from 62.5%.  The Destruction tree has had the most changes, most of which are buffs.  Fire and Brimstone increases the damage of Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on Immolated targets by 5/10/15%, up from 2/4/6%.  Moreover, Burning Embers now deals damage equal to 25/50% of Soul Fire and Imp’s Firebolt, up from 15/30%.  These changes should help Destruction have some more burst damage on demand, for when they need to kill a target quickly and can’t wait for their DOT’s to tick.

The most exciting change for warriors is that Charge (and related abilities) should now correctly path to a target even if the target moves during the Charge. This change should decrease the likelihood of the warrior Charging to a different location than the target.  Coming from someone who has played a warrior, there is nothing more annoying then charging into someone and landing in a spot they were at a few seconds ago.  This happened all to often, and made the move counter-intuitive.  Akin to Rogues and Hunters, Mortal Strike and Furious Attacks now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.  Warriors often have trouble landing the killing blow due to being kited, so this should ameliorate the situation.

Lots of new changes!  These talent adjustments make me excited for the huge Talent overhaul coming with Mists of Pandaria.  The result should be everyone having very unique hybrid classes.  There will be hundreds of ways to spec toons, and the old cookie cutter builds of being either a Fire, Frost, or Arcane Mage will be gone.  Instead, you can select the talents most suited to your play style from each tree.

Jake@mogs.com