Upcoming changes

[Erico]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1829962

[Erico]

We have a lot of players at 85 now doing everything from Heroic dungeons to rated Battlegrounds, and the class design team is starting to prepare our list of items to investigate for our next patch.

Before you dive down into the meat below (not really a pleasant image, that), be advised that we’re still early in the preliminary stages. The patch isn’t coming out tomorrow. I wrote this before the end of the year and other things may have cropped up in the meantime. Just because your class or pet problem isn’t mentioned below doesn’t mean we won’t address it.

PvE

We’re happy with damage overall. We have very few traditional tank and spank fights (even Argaloth likes to parry melee) so it’s hard to get consistent numbers without very large data sets. Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low. Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them. We aren’t seeing a lot of Subtlety rogues in PvE yet, so that sample size is still small. On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high. Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.

Healing in PvE is working out pretty much as intended. There are some Heroic dungeon bosses that are probably tougher than the required item level average permits. In general, you might have a tough time upon zoning into a Heroic dungeon with a bunch of strangers as soon as Dungeon Finder permits, especially if your group isn’t willing to communicate and work together. We want Heroics to be challenging -- if you want to zerg the content, stick to normal dungeons.

Tank balance overall seems good at this point in time. Threat seems to be in a good place -- good tanks don’t have much of a problem, but they can’t “phone it inâ€

[Atelo]

I like how they say they're happy with damage overall but then comment about how Arcane, Fire and Frost damage is too low... soo.... all mage specs are too low but they're happy with that.

Then they say they're gonna nerf mages by reducing frost nova and ring of frost duration... because 10 seconds is totally way too fucking long.

[Killtacular 2.0]

Pvp balance atelo . They did seem to be aware of the fact that mage dmg is too low though..

[Dartagn]

What Atelo said.

I still think Mages of all specs should be reduced to casting nothing but polymorph, on themselves...

[Tahiti]

I welcome the ret changes!

<3 T

[Poobah]

I think I also saw one mention about locks being too overpowered, uh huh, riiiiight. So basically my class is getting yet another nerf for no reason.

[Erico]

I think I also saw one mention about locks being too overpowered, uh huh, riiiiight. So basically my class is getting yet another nerf for no reason.

They completely ignored my class hahaha

[godpigeon]

love the "combat's mastery still isn't high enough"... and "not enough are using sub yet for real numbers".... yeah, it's because they released sub with broken main talent.

[kana]

I think I also saw one mention about locks being too overpowered, uh huh, riiiiight. So basically my class is getting yet another nerf for no reason.

Apparently you're doing it wrong!
I would say that most people probably are, especially demon spec'd ones (succubus is the new hotness for dps?!).

Also, caster masteries suck ass. Which, to any caster, comes without a surprise (elemental shaman are exempt, because everyone wants to be a fake rogue). Most of the caster masteries are 1.5-2.5% damage buff per point of mastery, depending. Mages for example have the following:
Fire - 2.5% bonus to dots per point
Frost - 2.5% bonus to frozen targets per point
Arcane - 1.5% (lols?) per point, but only if you're at above -mana threshold- otherwise it's lower.

The moral of the story? reforge that mastery crap to hit(to cap) or haste/crit (spec dependent). Maybe they'll fix it in 4.1, but who knows when that comes out.