3.0.9 Quick Summary for Raiding

by Trouble on February 09, 2010 under Patches

3.0.9 is slated to be released tomorrow with no testing time on the PTR. What does this mean? It’s all balance changes that are simple enough to not require any public testing. A lot of the changes look to be targeted mostly at PvP but a handful have PvE implications.

Hunter

Beast Mastery damage boost. They realized they over-nerfed it and are undoing some of the changes. BM should be close to competitive now, giving hunters a choice of specs in raids.

Mages

Arcane DPS was nerfed a decent amount (1-2% or so). (Corrected, misundersood the patch notes)

Paladin

Divine Plea is much less usable for Holy Paladins. It’s still there in a pinch but will most often not be used. This will cause Paladins to have to keep a close watch on their mana versus the nearly limitless mana situation they’re in now.

Rogue

Significant buffs to DPS. This should bring them up into the range of the rest of the classes, possibly near the top of the list. Rogues were in dire need of this boosting and thankfully Blizzard’s expedited tuning/balancing policy has brought these changes now rather than in 3 months when 3.1 comes out.

Overall a small patch but with some very good balance changes. With all current raid content being so trivial it’s not hugely important to weigh the consequences of all these changes, but I like to stay apprised of what’s going on.

balance, buffs, nerfs, Patches

7 comments

Kyth
02/09/2009
7:24 pm

The mage change is a nerf Trouble, not a buff. You missed the AP changes which result in ~2.5% dps loss with cooldown stacking (approximated -- it may be less, it may be more.)

It's a flat 0.5% dps loss from the AP changes, plus whatever damage the loss of constant-sycned IV+AP makes.

The AM glyph change doesn't make up for the DPS loss (especially since you give up the AP glyph for it.)
Flex
02/10/2009
2:42 am

Rogue's buff is around 4.5% for mutilate (considering the mutilate nerf too) which is in the lines of 150-200 dps boost. Pretty significant, but you can check your own wws to see if that will shift the numbers much ;)
Essay
02/10/2009
9:07 am

What troubles me is peoples over reactions to the NERFS/BUFFS...whether warrented or not. Was the nerf to BM to harsh, sure, and how about rogues needing a buff? Would Blizz have figured this stuff out if no one complained on the forums? I'd like to think they would, but will we ever know? Doubtful because everyone loves to whine about their class. Do I find it ironic that I complain about complainers? I'll never tell.

On a sidenote Trouble I <3 the blog, keeps me entertained at work since it's one of the few WoW related sites that doesn't get Websensed!
Flex
02/10/2009
11:00 am

Thats a question I have been asking myself for ages. Blizz: "We don't do buffs/nerfs based on whining, we have sophisticated testing tools, etc."
While this sounds just about right, what happens in reality is rather denies that statement. First, theorycrafters are able, using own testing and guessing to predict class' dps almost 100% correctly and show a class being too low or too high - is blizzard incapable of doing that for their own game? Second, it should not be any hard for blizz to simulate players in different encounters using just the game engine itself to easily compare the calculated damage with the real one, and do it scripted so it is reproducible and not relying on player reaction, latency or something. What blizzard does is more like random balancing: classes/specs that are clearly overpowered or underpowered end up in live, then they take a month to realize that based on what? whinning? then they overnerf, then buff again... till hit the spot?
It very looks like blizzard's decisions are based exactly on whining thus the popular "QQ moar". But it sounds rather absurd, so it is impossible to get clear answer
Feist
02/10/2009
11:22 am

The rogue buff is significant, but it's nowhere near the magnitude needed to put Rogues where mages/hunters/'locks are atm, so I doubt you'll see them topping charts just yet.
Alk
02/10/2009
7:45 pm

About the rogue buffs, combat has been buffed up to the point where rogues have gained almost 20% additional white dmg.

Combined with the upcoming changes to armor pen, making it more attractive against high armored targets. It means rogues will compete with mages/hunters/locks by the time ulduar hits.
Newmembar
02/10/2009
9:46 pm

Divine plea will be far from "unused". It might take a bit of setup in order to use it properly, but I think it will get almost as much use as it did before.

The top arcane mage in my guild tested his dps today against a dummy, and was pulling almost the same numbers (if not a little higher) than he did last night before the changes. self buffed he said between 3600 and 3800 on the boss target dummy.

Overall, some of the changes needed happening, and as mentioned, I believe most of them were intended to balance out pvp a little more.