---
title: 'HUGE Nerfs to Exp ‘Cheat’, BIG Class Buffs Coming & Crest Changes Reverted'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dxo2e2nqUE4'
video_id: 'Dxo2e2nqUE4'
date: 2026-06-27
duration_sec: 1012
---

# HUGE Nerfs to Exp ‘Cheat’, BIG Class Buffs Coming & Crest Changes Reverted

> Source: [HUGE Nerfs to Exp ‘Cheat’, BIG Class Buffs Coming & Crest Changes Reverted](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dxo2e2nqUE4)

## Summary



## Transcript

Hey folks, this is Colani. We have some
big buffs coming through with the next
weekly reset for some of the most
underperforming specs in the current
patch. We also have some huge updates to
go over from this week's PTR build,
including a huge nerf to one of the
fastest leveling methods available right
now. There are even more big class
changes to go over and a lot of very
important updates about how crest
upgrades are going to work, how dungeons
will change in season 2, what new
seasonal rewards we'll be able to pick
up. We have our first real preview of
some major new systems. And there are
some fun updates like hunters finally
being able to use enchant illusions on
their ranged weapons. The Midsummer Fire
Festival event mount will also be much
easier to pick up thanks to some recent
hot fixes. There's a lot to talk about,
so let's break it all down in this
week's WoW news video. Now, before we
jump in, be sure to hit up that like
button and subscribe so you never miss
another video. Let's kick things off
with this week's round of class changes,
buffs, and nerfs. There are a lot of
blanket buffs to help some of the
underperforming specs catch up a bit as
we round out season 1. Balance druids
will see a 4% damage buff for all of
their abilities, which is always nice.
Feral druids have been doing well in
mythic plus, but not so great in raid,
so they'll get a 3% damage boost across
the board. Melee auto attack damage is
also up 15%, rip damage, saw a 5% buff,
and then rampant ferocity damage was
nerfed by 15%. So, a bit of give and
take for the feral druids this week. And
then restored will see a huge 15% buff
to all of their damage done. But their
bare form thrash damage was reduced by
25%. So you won't have to swap to bare
form quite as often if you want to kick
out some decent damage as a resto druid
next week. Devastation evokers join the
crew with a 3% damage boost across the
board. Arcane mages also get a 3% buff
to all of their damage done. Holy
priests will see some nice buffs to
their holy words. Both serenity and
sanctify healing are being increased by
20%. And then rest shaman's ekin at the
end with a 4% increase to all of their
healing done. So not a crazy list of
changes for the live service this week,
but at least some buffs are coming
through for the specs that are
struggling a bit. That will hopefully
help more people achieve their end of
season goals. All of these changes will
go live with the next weekly reset,
which will be June 30th for NA Realms
and July 1st for EU Realms. Let's move
on to the class changes that were
included in this week's 12.1 PTR build.
For the death knights, frost is going to
see a lot of updates this week. Pillar
of frost strength buff was cut down to
20% from 30%. Howling blast damage was
increased by 100%. Empower rune weapon
and glacial advance damage both saw 30%
buffs. Icy death torrent, frost fever,
and remorseless winter all saw huge 100%
buffs. Frost size damage is up 20% and
frost strike damage is up 25%. But then
obliterate damage saw a 25% nerf. Breath
of Syndraosa is down 20%. Frost Bane
damage was reduced by 30%. Frostworm's
fury damage caught a 20% nerf. And then
perafrost was buffed up by 5%. So just
like most other classes, a lot of damage
has been moved from cooldowns and into
your standard rotational spells.
For the deathbringer hero talent tree,
wither away now causes frost fever to
deal its damage 75% faster, down from
100%. Deathly blows now increases frost
strike damage by 35%, up from 15%.
Reaper's mark cast and explosion damage
were reduced by 25% and exterminate
damage was cut down by 17%. For Rider of
the Apocalypse, White Mane's unleash
damage was nerfed by 30%. So, a lot less
damage coming out of your hero talent
trees as well. And then unholy has even
more changes this week. Blight burst now
causes putrify to extend the duration of
plagues by 3 seconds down from 4.5
seconds. Runic power spenders now extend
the duration of plagues by 1 second down
from 1.5. And dread plague now retains
its extended duration when applied to a
new target while within 40 yards of the
death knight. So you won't be able to
extend your plagues quite as freely. But
swapping targets with dread plague
should be much easier with these changes
in play.
Demon hunters are up next, and Havoc has
a few changes this time. Trail of Ruin
has been updated to be instant damage
rather than damage over time. Serrated
Glaes is now a buff on the Demon Hunter
for 12 seconds rather than a debuff on
your target. Blind Fury's fury
generation was cut down to 10 and 20
fury per second. And inner demon is now
a choice node with Chaos Theory instead
of Chaotic Transformation. For
Vengeance, Sigil of Chains is going to
be baseline, so you won't have to spend
a talent point to pick that up anymore.
Roaring Fire has moved to where Sigil of
Chains used to be instead of being a
choice node with Sigil of Silence. And
then Sigil of Silence and Feed the Demon
have swapped positions as well. So
hopefully you can pick up some key
talents much easier in 12.1.
Guardian Druids have some more
adjustments to their apex talents. The
bonus rage was moved from rank one to
rank three. The base chance to proc was
adjusted to 10%. Spirit rage generation
was increased to eight. And rank three
grants one guaranteed spirit and
increases thrash and mangle damage while
a spirit is active. Fingers crossed to
these apex talents end up in a good
place. So they're an interesting pickup
for guardian druids moving forward.
Evokers and monks both got the same kind
of hybrid healing buffs that many other
classes got when the PTR first went up.
So panacea healing, defy fate, and
molten blood healing all went up 25% for
evoker. Then Silent Sanctuary and Wind
Walkers Expel harms saw 25% buffs as
well. Paladins have a couple of quick
changes this week. Prod is going to see
a lot more abilities added into the
cooldown manager so you can track
whatever you want much easier. And then
the rat fourpiece was changed to no
longer cost the empowered Templars's
verdicts to be free, but it will empower
your next two Templar verdicts instead.
For the shaman's reactive warding
healing was increased by 25% and
elemental stormkeeper has changed for
this patch, but the previous notes
weren't really clear. Stormkeeper no
longer causes lightning bolt to generate
an additional elemental overload, and
that's pretty much the only change
there. Now for enhancement, lightning
bolt and chain lightning damage are up
20%. Lava lash, storm strike, and melee
damage all saw 15% buffs, but then doom
winds only increases the chance for
windfury weapon to activate by 50% down
from 100%. For the hero talent trees,
Stormbbringer's tempest main target
damage saw a 10% nerf, and the secondary
target damage saw a 30% nerf. For
totemic, surging totem tremor damage
caught a 15% damage nerf, and surging
bolts damage was reduced by 10%. And
then warlocks and warriors saw some
healing boosts as well. For warlocks,
drain life and zebra's resilience
healing are up 25%. And for arms
warriors, ignore pain absorb was
increased by 25%. Now, all of these
updates are for the 12.1 PTR. So, if you
want to check out the changes and your
new tier set bonuses, you'll need to hop
onto the PTR to check them out.
This PTR build has more than just class
balance tuning, though. For example, the
leveling trick that some players were
using with the earn race has been nerfed
quite considerably, but it actually
affects everyone to a lesser degree. In
12.1, the baseline experience gained
from exploring zones has been reduced by
60%. So, everyone will get less
experience from exploring as they level
up. This impacts the earn more due to
their wideeyed wonder racial ability,
which significantly increases experience
earned from exploring zones. That ratio
turned out to be quite potent indeed, as
some players were leveling from 10 to 90
in under 3 hours from just exploring
zones on their earn characters. There's
even an add-on to make the whole thing
easier and faster. Some folks were even
using this trick to level up their alt
super fast and then just paying for a
race change so they didn't actually have
to play as an earn character. It's kind
of like a cheaper character boost. I
guess this is probably why they're
changing exploration experience in the
first place. So when 12.1 goes live,
this probably won't be fast enough to be
worth it anymore. Now, it's not all bad
news for the earn, though, because this
will impact one of their racials quite
significantly. The dev team are
increasing the effectiveness of the
well-fed buff gain from ingest minerals
by 30%. So, an actually useful earn
ratio is seeing a decent buff. Something
else to consider is that if you really
wanted to level up a few alts using the
earn exploration trick, you'll still be
able to until this patch goes live.
These are not hot fixes, which means the
XP nerfs won't come in until the patch
hits live servers, which gives you at
least until August to take advantage of
the leveling trick before it goes away.
Personally, I would just wait for the
turbulent timeways event, but you do
you.
Something else that was confirmed this
week is that upgrading gear will not be
significantly changing as we head into
season 2. When the PTR first went up,
all gear upgrades were using the
original season 1 design where crest
costs would increase with each upgrade
for an item. So, you would spend 10
crests on the first item and it would
increase by 10 for each bump up in item
level. So, you would actually end up
spending 50 crests to get an item from
five of six to six of six. Naturally,
everyone hated the idea. So, it was
quickly shot down before the Midnight
expansion went live. I guess that's why
it was so surprising to see it pop back
up in the first week of the PTR for
patch 12.1. But the dev team
specifically noted in this week's PTR
build that the scaling upgrade costs was
a bug. Gear upgrades will be the exact
same as they were in season 1 with a
flat 20 crest cost for each upgrade. So,
if you were worried about this change
making its way back into the game, you
can breathe a sigh of relief.
Something that will be changing as we
head into season 2 are dungeons,
specifically the difficulty load and how
it's split between the various roles. In
season 1, tanks and healers bore most of
the burden with healers arguably having
the hardest time. For season 2, the dev
team wants to shift some of that burden
over to the DPS, who have historically
had the easiest time in most content
types. To achieve that, we'll see
slightly higher creature health pools, a
larger emphasis on skills like target
prioritization and damage checks, and
some abilities trading raw damage
effects for penalties to damage output
or mobility. So, if your DPS don't do
their job and target the right stuff,
fights will likely take much longer, and
you'll be at risk of wiping due to a
lack of damage throughput. That should
also make the healer's job a bit easier
if certain abilities aren't throwing out
huge chunks of damage to your team and
are instead just reducing damage when
things go wrong. It's an interesting
change, and dungeon success should feel
more evenly shared across the group. But
only time will tell if this will
actually do what the dev team intends.
I'm all for trying new approaches,
though, and we should expect season 2
dungeons to have the same overall
difficulty as season 1. So, if you
enjoyed the easy Mythic Plus experience
at the start of Midnight, season 2
should be more of the same. We'll also
see a change to how cone and line
attacks are displayed with distinct
borders that should make it easier to
tell where these attacks will actually
hit. This follows the change to circles
and swirls, which gave them solid
borders for the exact same reason. And I
am so happy the dev team are continuing
to make these spells easy to read and
judge. You shouldn't ever have to double
guess whether or not you're going to be
hit by an ability due to poor visuals.
So, this looks like a great next step
forward.
A lot of the new season rewards were
also included in this build, including
the new mounts for season 2 mythic plus
dungeon achievements. If you reach 2,000
rating and get the keystone master
achievement, you'll earn yourself the
breath of blight mount, which is a toxic
green skeletal wind serpent mount, which
is both very cool and quite unique. I
don't think we've really seen many
mounts like this before, so unique mount
rewards are always awesome. If you can
get up to 3k rating and earn the
keystone legend achievement, you'll get
the same mount, but in a red and black
color scheme, which looks pretty
amazing. If season 1 is anything to go
by, getting up to 3k shouldn't be too
bad, but I guess we'll have to wait and
see how the new dungeon pool and these
dungeon changes play out. The new season
2 Nemesis delve solo achievement mount
can also be previewed if you manage to
take down the new Nemesis all by
yourself on the higher difficulty. You
can walk away with the apotheic
soulcrusher mount which is another mech
style mount in that you'll stand in the
same kind of place and will most likely
move in the same kind of ways, but it's
got a fiery troll theme going on which
definitely fits in with patch 12.1.
And then for all the raiders out there,
if you can conquer the venomous abyss
and take down Oollettech on mythic
difficulty, you'll get the primeval sky
friend. It says sky friend, but surely
that's supposed to be sky fiend, right?
Unless we're all just making friends
with the flying snakes now. Either way,
it's a two-headed flying snake mount.
That looks pretty cool.
We also have our first look at the new
alter of corrosion talent feature coming
for the open world players in this
patch. Most activities are going to
reward you with a new currency called
corrosive coins, which are used to buy
up all manner of cosmetic goodies and
rewards, but they are also used to
unlock talents. In this new altar, you
can gain new powers that increase your
primary stats, give you a chance to
poison enemies, reduce the damage you
take from venom pools, reduce the damage
you take from monsters. You can find
extra keys or treasures, and a variety
of other small bonuses that make playing
in the zone, especially in the vaults
area, a bit easier to deal with. and
less frustrating. There are 18 talents
total, and the cost does increase for
every talent point you earn, so you'll
have to spend a lot of corrosive coins
if you want to unlock everything, which
means a lot of farming in the new zone.
Now, while I would assume many of these
talents only work in the new zone, many
of them aren't really explicit about it.
Giving your abilities a chance to
inflict poison on enemies may carry over
into other activities, especially if
they're more openworld oriented like
delves. So, we'll have to wait and see
what the scope of this system could be,
but usually the dev team tries to avoid
making these powers a requirement for
dungeons or raid progress. As you unlock
more talent points, you'll earn more and
more corrosive coins. So, if you want to
max out your corrosive coins to buy
everything on offer, it might be a good
idea to focus on these talents first so
that you're earning more coins from
every source.
Another update I want to highlight in
this week's PTR build gives hunters the
ability to use enchant illusions on
their ranged weapons. I'm honestly
surprised it took this long, but hunters
can finally make their bows and guns
sparkle, drip poison, crackle with
flames, or whatever your favorite
illusion happens to do. And then there's
a bunch of focus testing starting up
this week. The new dungeon, Alter of
Fangs, opened up on all difficulties.
So, we got our first look at the new
three boss dungeon. Raid testing for the
Venomous Abyss, started this week as
well, with most of the heroic bosses
being covered already. and Prey season 2
became available, which has some very
interesting updates that we'll get to in
another video. So, the 12.1 PTR is
chugging along quite nicely and
hopefully we'll end up with a well
polished, bug-free experience when it
goes live sometime in August.
Now, in other news, if you've been
trying to get your hands on the special
mount from the Midsummer Fire Festival
event, there is some good news this
week. In a hot fix, the dev team
introduced bad luck protection for the
mount, which should lead to most players
picking it up if you complete the mini
dungeon at least once per day. The Sun
Festival painted rocks chance to drop in
the satchel of chilled goods has been
doubled for the first drop of the day on
your account, and the drop rate will
continue to increase each day until you
obtain the mount. So, if you keep
running the Frost Lord Aoon dungeon, you
will have a much better chance of
grabbing the mount before the event
ends. If you had no idea this event was
running, you can quickly hop into the
dungeon by queuing from the dungeon
finder tool. Just open the dropdown,
pick the frost lord of hoon, and keep
your fingers crossed. As a side note,
the bug that people were using to try
and get the mount multiple times per day
was fixed. So even if you leave your
bags unopened, you won't be able to pick
up another one. So you are strictly
limited to one chance per day now. But
that's all of the updates we have. So
that's it for this week's WoW news
video. What do you think of patch 12.1
from what you've seen so far and when do
you think the patch will go live? Leave
all your thoughts in the comment section
below. A big thank you to all of our
supporters over on Patreon and all of
our members here on YouTube. You can see
their names on screen. If you're
interested in supporting the channel,
you can find links in the description or
click the join button just below the
video. If you enjoyed the video or found
it useful in any way, make sure to
subscribe and ring that notification
bell so you're always kept up to date.
Thanks for watching folks. Good luck and
have fun. And as always, I will see you
next time.