Enhancement Shamans should start collecting Strength gear in WoW Forever
Blizzard is also buffing Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers next week.
Blizzard has announced the first round of WoW Forever class tuning, with hotfixes planned for Tuesday, November 10. The upcoming changes will address Hunter pet and Warlock Voidwalker durability, Affliction Warlock damage rotations, and Enhancement Shaman stat priorities.
The game launched a few days ago, so this class hotfix is coming soon right after. Blizzard continues to keep an eye on how classes perform and how players level through Azeroth.
For this patch, they identified three main issues that they want to fix, without waiting for a big patch or update later on.
Pets Are Getting Buffed
Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers are currently less durable than Blizzard intended. The team wants their ability to tank enemies to be roughly in line with their performance in Classic Era, so they will adjust their stats to reach that target.
Affliction Warlocks are also getting a small "buff". Blizzard has found that continuously channeling Wrack currently deals more damage than combining it with damage-over-time spells such as Siphon Life, Corruption, and Bane of Agony. The upcoming hotfix should make those DoTs worthwhile to cast with Wrack, without increasing the spec's overall damage output.
Enhancement Shamans Should Change Their Gear
The third adjustment concerns Enhancement Shamans, who currently get more value from Intellect and Spellpower than Strength and Attack Power. Blizzard plans to change this so Strength becomes their strongest stat, with ideal gear combining Strength or Attack Power with some Intellect or Spellpower.
There is already one piece of advice for players who are still levelling. Blizzard specifically recommends collecting Strength and Attack Power gear from now on, instead of prioritising caster equipment.
You will have to wait for the patch notes for this hotfix to know the exact changes and stat values, because these have not been announced yet.
Blizzard is also still investigating other issues, and they might add more fixes over the weekend that will then be released with this same patch.
And of course, they also plan to make more class balance adjustments in the future if needed.
Class Tuning Incoming - November 10
Now that players around the world are leveling up in WoW: Forever, we’ve identified a few class issues that we feel need some immediate changes. Today, we’re still investigating these issues and working through them with a plan to release hotfixes on Tuesday, November 10 to address:
We’ve seen that Hunter pets and Warlock Voidwalkers are not as durable as tanks as we would like them to be. Our intent is for their effectiveness to be relatively the same as in Classic Era. We will adjust their stats as necessary to accomplish this.
Affliction Warlock reports indicate that always channeling Wrack is superior to also casting damage-over-time abilities like Siphon Life, Corruption, and Bane of Agony. We will make adjustments to make sure those are always worthwhile to cast combined with Wrack, without affecting Affliction Warlocks’ total damage output.
Enhancement Shamans are finding that Intellect and Spellpower are superior stats compared to Strength and Attack Power. We plan to make changes so that Strength is always their strongest stat, and Enhancement Shamans will not prefer gear intended for Mages and Warlocks. Ideally, Enhancement’s best items have Strength or Attack Power, along with some Intellect and/or Spell Power.
Please note: Enhancement Shaman players who are leveling up will want to collect Strength and Attack Power gear from now on.
We may find new issues over the weekend, and we will keep you updated. Our plan is to make class balance changes on Tuesday, and then on future Tuesdays if necessary. Thank you very much for your feedback!
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